A Storm in Their Lives
by Flagg1991
Summary: A sequel to "Their First Time." During a destructive winter storm, Lincoln reveals his new relationship to Ronnie Ann, who is hurt and becomes angry; meanwhile, Clyde's obsession with Lori intensifies. Cover by Lentex.
1. It's the Holiday Season

_**Step into Christmas  
Let's join together  
We can watch the snow fall forever and ever  
Eat, drink and be merry  
Come along with me  
Step into Christmas  
The admission's free**_

 **\- Elton John**

 _ **It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas  
Toys in every store  
But the prettiest sight to see, is the holly that will be  
On your own front door**_

 **\- Johnny Mathis**

 _Does he have this one already?_

Luan stood in the middle of Gamerville in Royal Woods Mall, a slim black cartridge in her hands. The artwork on the cover depicted a spaceship soaring though the void and firing its blasters or cannons or whatever they were called. It looked like it would be right up his alley, but she didn't want to spend sixty dollars just to find out he already had it.

She looked up, undecided. People were browsing around her. A fat man in a T-shirt scooted by, and she leaned as close to the rack as she could to allow him passage. Should she get it? Hmmmm.

It was December 15, and Luan had put off Christmas shopping until the last minute. Again. It was a habit of hers. A bad habit. Her reasoning was this: Why buy something for someone in September and store it under a bed or in a closet? It's a long way from the first day of fall to Christmas. What if that person's _must have_ isn't even around when you went shopping? Video games, for example. She could have picked one up in October or November, but what if a new one came out right before Christmas that he _reaaaally_ wanted?

If you waited for that last minute item, you looked like the _man_ (or woman) on Christmas day. Sixty bucks, though, wow. She had a hundred dollars that she'd saved up over the course of the year, a hundred bucks for twelve people.

She usually did her shopping at Dollar-Rama, but this year, she wanted to get Lincoln something special. The thing was: She didn't know which damn video games he had which he didn't. She played them with him from time to time, sure, but they were all the same to her. Blow this up, slay that thing, run from this thing. He was such a boy.

She grinned.

Okay. She'd get it _if_ the store had a return policy, that way he could bring it back and exchange it for something else. Looking around, she saw a man with short hair and glasses talking to a woman in a heavy coat. He wore a black shirt with the red and white GAMERVILLE logo over the right breast. A keychain hung around his neck.

Luan slipped through the increasingly crowded store and waited for him to be finished. When he was, he turned, and started.

"You scared me," he said, his hand flying to his chest.

"Sorry," Luan said. "I want to buy this game for my brother, but I don't know if he has it already. Can he bring it back if he does?"

The man nodded. "Yep. He can exchange it for a game of equal or lesser value or he can exchange it for a gift card of the amount you paid for the game. If he exhanges it for a game of lesser value, he'll get the difference back."

"Okay, cool," she said.

The man nodded and turned to help a boy in a brown hoodie. Luan took her prize and wormed her way to the counter. There was a long line, and she had to wait for nearly fifteen minutes, her impatience growing.

 _You're lucky I love you, Lincoln._

When it was finally her turn, she paid the bored looking clerk and then walked out into the mall proper. Tinsel, holly, and garland were wrapped around load-bearing columns. Piped Christmas music played through tinny speakers. A giant Christmas tree dominated the lobby, soft white lights wrapped expertly around its length. Shiny presents were heaped beneath it. People carrying shopping bags wandered to and fro. Behind her, near Books-a-Plenty, a mall Santa sat in a red throne, smiling for pictures with tots. Luan wondered what kind of pay those guys got. It had to be a rough job. She remembered when Lana and Lola were little and mom brought them here to take a picture with Jolly St. Nick. How they _cried_. Oh, and thrashed. The poor guy almost dropped Lola.

At the escalators, she stopped and checked her phone. She had a text from Lincoln. "We r at the food court."

Lunch sounded good right about now.

She started in that direction, getting stuck behind a very fat man riding an electric scooter, and then a very old woman with a cane. As she neared the foot court, the good smells of a dozen different types of cuisine found her nose, and her stomach rumbled.

At the food court, she found her family occupying several tables. Lori, Leni, and Luna were at one, mom, dad, Lisa, and Lilly at another, Lola, Lucy, Lincoln, and Lana at another, and Lynn sitting by herself. Luan walked to Lynn's table and sat down; her and Lincoln had been taking great pains not to spend too much time together lest they arouse suspicion. After what happened in October, both were terrified of being ripped apart again.

"What'cha got?" Luan asked Lynn.

"Meatball sub," Lynn said happily. She picked it up and took a bite. Meatballs and marinara sauce spurted onto the plate. "Aw, man."

Luan laughed. "Looks like it got the _drop_ on you."

Lynn picked up a meatball and plopped it into her mouth. "Lynn Loud scores!"

"Luan," mom said, "come here."

Luan got over and went to her parents' table. Mom pulled a five dollar bill out of her purse and handed it to her. "Thanks, mom," she said.

She stood in the middle of the food court for a long time trying to decide what she was in the mood for. Pizza? Hm, maybe. Tacos? Nah, it wasn't Tuesday (get it?). Finally, she settled for Chinese.

Food in hand, she returned to Lynn's table just as Lynn shoved the last bit of the sub into her mouth.

"What's that?" she asked, bits of meat and bread spraying the table.

"Tofu and bean sprouts."

Lynn crinkled her nose. "People actually eat that stuff?"

"Yes."

Lynn shook her head as Luan dug in. The tofu was a little overdone and the bean sprouts were dry, but you can't argue with 3.99.

"Hey, lame-o!"

Luan tensed.

Ronnie Anne.

She glanced over her shoulder just as Ronnie Anne leaned over the back of the booth Lincoln was sitting in and gave him a nuggie. He winced and threw his head back and forth. He was smiling though.

"What'cha up to?" she asked.

"Christmas shopping," he said.

"Yeah, me too."

Luan turned away as their conversation continued. Lynn was looking at her, her eyebrows raised.

"What?" Luan asked defensively.

Lynn put up her hands. "Whoa, killer. I'm not the one talking to Lincoln."

Luan shook her head. "Shut up."

Behind her, Ronnie Anne laughed. "Alright, pencil-neck, I'll catch you later." As she passed, mom and dad both greeted her.

"Hey, Mr. and Mrs. Loud. Hear about the storm?"

"Yes, we did," mom said. "It's supposed to be really bad."

"The storm" had been big in the news for nearly a week. The meteorologists were calling it "Winter Storm Carrie," and it was supposed to be the biggest winter storm in forty years; it was currently creeping east, dumping on Iowa and the Dakotas. It was supposed to hit them either tomorrow or Saturday.

"Three feet," Ronnie Anne said, then added with a grin, "school'll probably be out for a week!"

She walked on, and Luan watched her until she disappeared into a crowd of shoppers. When she turned away, Lynn was trying to suppress a smile.

"You're like a dog with a bone," she said, "or me with a football."

"No, I'm not," she replied, but she _was_.

Since she and Lincoln had gotten back together in October, Ronnie Anne had been hanging around more and more, texting Lincoln, showing up unannounced, seeking him out after school and walking home with him. At first Luan didn't think much of it. They were friends, after all. But as time wore on, she woke up and smelled the coffee: Ronnie Anne liked him.

And that scared the shit out of Luan. She couldn't lose Lincoln again; she barely survived the last time, and she was the one who broke up with him. If he left her for Ronnie Anne, she would die. Not metaphorically, _literally_. Her heart would give out and she would pass away.

But what could she do? She didn't want to be bitchy and make Lincoln stop hanging out with her. She trusted Lincoln. She didn't trust Ronnie Anne, though.

 _If it's not one thing, it's another,_ she thought.

By now, everyone was done and starting to get up. "Okay," dad said, "meet back here at three."

"Enjoy your 'meal'," Lynn said as she jumped up.

"Enjoy rushing to the bathroom in twenty minutes."

Lynn stuck out her tongue and followed Luna and Lucy. Lincoln brought up the rear and glanced back at her. She made a kissy face, and he pecked the air.

She was smiling when she went back to her 'meal'." It never ceased to amaze her how happy Lincoln made her. Before him, she had no clue that joy _this_ intense existed. It made all the happiest days of her life look like puke by comparison. Her thoughts turned back to Ronnie Anne, however, and her mood darkened. She finished her tofu and beans, got up, and threw the container into one of the trashcans. At the insersection, she hung and left and started toward Dollar-Rama. Past the fountains, she saw Lynn dodging in and out of the crowd, her hands clasped to her stomach.

"Told you!" Luan called.

Lynn looked at her and, without breaking stride, raised a middle finger. Luan laughed.

Dollar-Rama was even more crammed than Gamerville had been. Of course, if they didn't call it "Dollar-Rama" they could call it "Smaller-Rama," because it was small. Ha. She walked up and down the aisles, looking for something for each member of her family. She found a Mick Swagger calender for Luna, a gift basket of soaps and creams for Leni, make-up for Lola, and a watch for dad. Lisa and Lori were the two hardest to shop for. She could get away with getting Lori nail polish and a tube of moisturizing cream, but Lisa...Lisa was the _real_ hard one. Most of the things she used on a daily basis weren't sitting on the shelves of a dollar store in the mall.

Along the back wall, a row of small TV sets lined a shelf, all on and tuned to The Weather Channel. Images of snowy wastelands, crashed cars, and fallen power lines flickered across the screens. "Nearly a million people are without power," an unseen man was saying, "and millions more are in the direct path of Winter Storm Carrie. The governors of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan have already declared a state of emergency. In Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan, the national guard has been activated."

That bad, huh?

Luan paused for a moment and watched. The scene cut to a man sitting in front of a screen displaying a map of the US. A big white blob sat over the Dakotas and Iowa. A model showed it plowing through the Midwest and into Ohio and West Virginia.

"This is the big one, folks," the man said, "we're talking whiteout conditions, winds up to 75 miles per hour, and up to three feet of snow in places. If you're old enough to remember the Blizzard of '78...this is worse."

Wow. Luan didn't know how bad the Blizzard of '78 was, but Carrie sounded pretty effing bad.

"What makes this storm worse than '78?" The camera panned to reveal a woman sitting next to the man.

"Well, Pamela, you see this band of purple behind Carrie? That's an ice storm. Immediately after Carrie comes through, this little guy riding her coattails is going to turn everything to ice. That means power lines are coming down, roofs are caving in, and road travel is going to be near impossible. The world's not coming to an end, but it's going to feel that way."

"Pretty neat, huh?"

Luan jumped. Ronnie Anne was standing next to her, her hands shoved into the pockets of her purple hoodie. Luan inwardly sighed.

"It's kind of scary," she admitted.

Ronnie Anne shrugged. "I'm not worried. This isn't the first snowstorm we've ever had. Tell lame-o I said stay warm." With that, she turned and walked away.

It wasn't until a few minutes later that Luan began to wonder if Ronnie Anne had been following her, and whether or not "tell lame-o I said stay warm" was a meant to be snide. _Tell him I said hi. Kiss, kiss._

Of course it wasn't, Luan cautioned herself. Ronnie Anne had no idea that she and Lincoln were together.

Still, Luan didn't like it.

 _Maybe I should talk to Lincoln after all..._

No, she couldn't do that. She was being paranoid, and damned if she was going to be the jealous, clingy type. No way, no how.

Shaking those thoughts from her head, she went off in search of presents for the rest of her family. In twenty minutes, she had everything she needed.

Except something for Lisa.

Damn it. A line from an old movie she watched with her dad once came to mind. A scientist type said, "Maybe in 1985 plutonium is available in drugstores, but this is 1955." Or something like that. It was a long time ago. If this like that _was_ available over the counter, shopping for her smartest sister would be a breeze. _Here's a nuclear reactor and some uranium. Merry Christmas._

But if Luan had learned one thing in her nearly fifteen years on planet earth, it was this: Things were never that easy.

Sighing, she totaled up the cost of her purchases. She'd have eleven dollars left over. Lisa liked Indian food, and if she wasn't mistaken, there was a kiosk somewhere with a butt load of gift cards.

Worth a try.

Luan paid for her things and left, walking up and down the mall. She passed Leni and Lori at one point, and Leni waved at her. "Hi, Luan!"

"Hey," she said, stopping. "Isn't there a kiosk with a bunch of gift cards around here somewhere?"

"Back there," Lori said, hooking her thumb over her thumb. "You're looking for a gift for Lisa, right?"

"Yeah," Luan admitted.

"There are gift cards to that Indian takeout place she likes. They're on the far side, by the corner."

"Thanks, Lori!"

Ten minutes later, Luan's Christmas shopping was officially done. Whew. And not a moment too soon: When she checked her phone, it was 2:56.

She started back to the food court, and spotted a familiar face in the crowd.

"Hey, Clyde!" she said, waving.

He saw her, and his eyes widened. He looked like a boy who had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. "H-Hi, Luan."

"Shopping for your dads?

"Yeah," he said too quickly, "just a little shopping." He flashed a toothy grin.

Luan raised an eyebrow. "Well...good luck. This place is a madhouse."

When she reached the food court, her parents and siblings were waiting, each one holding plastic bags. "I was just about to text you," mom said.

"Sorry," Luan said, "I had trouble finding a gift for Lisa."

Inexplicably, the hairs on the back of her neck stood, and she shivered. She glanced over her shoulder, and Clyde was there, fifty feet away, half hidden behind a column wrapped in golden garland.

She watched him watching her. Then, slowly, he slipped fully into concealment.

 _That boy is so weird,_ she thought.


	2. Can't Get You Out of My Head

_**You are an obsession  
I cannot sleep  
I am your possession  
Unopened at your feet  
There's no balance  
No equality  
Be still I will not accept defeat**_

\- **Animotion**

 _ **Heart beats silly like a big bass drum  
Losing all equilibrium  
It's so hard in the middle of the week  
Maybe this woman's just all I need**_

\- **Rod Stewart**

He was cracking up.

That's what happened when you put pressure on something for too long, it started to crack. That was him. Clyde McBride. Hiya. Pleased to meet ya.

When the murky morning light crept into his room on December 15, he was awake, his eyes wide open. He was sure he fell asleep last night, but he couldn't remember doing so, and, come to think of it, he couldn't remember waking up. He wanted to go back to sleep, but he couldn't. He never could when he was up with the dawn.

Resigned, he sat up and ran his fingers through his hair. His mind was already beginning to race. Great. He reached under his mattress and slipped the Polaroid out. He sat it in his lap, upside down, and took a deep breath. He did this every morning. It was a game. See how long he could last before turning it over. His best time was five minutes, fifty-eight seconds. The date was July 7, 2017.

Closing his eyes, he began counting.

1...

Lori appeared in his mind, a smile on her face.

2...

Now she was standing over him, her arms crossed, a look of annoyance on her face. God, she was beautiful when she was irritated.

3...

He heard her voice, and opened his eyes.

Not real. Just imagination. He had a very vivid imagination. You had to when you were alone and loved a woman who didn't love you. Lincoln was lucky. He had ten sisters to keep him company. Aside from his parents, Clyde McBride was alone. The house was quiet, like a library, perfectly posed, like a museum. Sometimes he sat on the posh leather sofa and looked around himself, willing the place to feel like home, but it rarely did. It wasn't his parents' fault. They did the best they could by him. He realized that. That didn't alleviate his crushing loneliness, however. Nothing did. Except for staying the night at the Loud house.

He liked it there, and not just because Lori lived there. He liked the noise, the chaos, the very _presence_ of other kids. He could feel it as soon as he walked in. It was an energy in the air. It invigorated him. Here, with his fathers, he was sedated. He was in bed by eight and during the day he dragged as though his bones were made of concrete. Sometimes he fell asleep sitting on the couch after school. He'd bound through the door, crackling with electricity, but as soon as he stepped through the threshold, the house drained it away like a vampire. He'd sit down, and within moments he'd nod off.

His dads worried, and that bothered him. He tried to be the best son he could; he wanted to make them see how much he appreciated them adopting him...he wanted to make them happy so they'd never take him back to the orphanage. But day in and day out, he failed them. He was surprised they hadn't taken him back already. He wouldn't blame them if they did, just like he didn't blame his mother for giving him up in the first place.

25...

Dr. Lopez said he had abandonment issues. Well, yeah. When you can't trust the woman who gave birth to you, who _can_ you trust?

 _Your fathers,_ Dr. Lopez said once.

No, he replied, not even them. He wasn't their flesh and blood, and when someone isn't your flesh and blood, can you love them unconditionally? _Really_ love them?

28...

His heart was beginning to race. His palms were sweaty. He expected the hammer to drop at any time. All day, every day, he scurried along, shoulders hunched, ducking at every sound, certain that when he turned, his fathers would be there with his bags, ready to take him back to the orphanage. How he would beg and plead. No, don't take me back, I'll do better, I swear. I'll stop being weird and having issues. Just don't make me go back. Please.

30...

He flipped the photo over, his hands trembling. Lori Loud stared back at him, a smile on her face and a light in her eyes. Clyde's heartbeat slowed, and his stomach ached. Looking at Lori...it made everything better. Sure, it made him feel hollow on the inside (after a while) because he knew he would never have her, but he'd rather be empty than filled with gnawing worry.

Sighing, he traced his finger along her face. What he wouldn't give to have her, though.

He looked up from the picture and glanced out the window. The sky was gray and leaden. He got up, went to the window, and stared out. It was a mile and a half from his house to hers. He couldn't see it from here, but sometimes, he thought, if he squinted, he would see her. He never did. But every day was a new day.

What time is it? He checked his phone. 6:30. He'd text Lincoln at eight and see if he could come over. He wanted to see Lori, true, but he also wanted to see Lincoln. Lincoln hadn't had much time for him over the past couple of months, which didn't entirely surprise Clyde; everyone got sick of him eventually. Still, it hurt. Lincoln was his best friend. Or had been. Now he had no one.

What's new there?

He turned away from the window and took a deep breath.

 _Hey, Lori._

 _Oh, hi. Clyde._

 _How_ you _doing?_

 _*Giggle* Good, you?_

He blinked and tried to steady his mind.

 _McBride! What did the five fingers say to the face?_

 _I don't know, what?_

 _SLAP!_

Oh, and they _laughed_. Every single one of them. A massive group of orphans standing around him, faces blank and eyes dead, pointing. He got to his knees and whipped around. They were _everywhere_. He pressed his hands against his head and screamed. Stop! Stop laughing at me!

 _McBride!_

It was Sister Michelle. He was back in the little classroom that haunted his dreams. The nun loomed over him, her face hard and her arms crossed.

"I'm sorry," Clyde muttered in the here and now.

Unmoved, the phantom lifted a ruler and brought it down on his knuckles.

 _Whack!_

He jumped and tripped over his feet. He was panting. His heart thundered. He lay there for a long time, trying to catch his breath and willing the voices echoing through his head to leave him alone. Finally, silence reigned. When Harold knocked on his door, he was sitting placidly in bed, staring at the wall, the picture of Lori clutched in his hand. He jerked and shoved it under the covers.

"Yeah?"

"Hey, son, are you up?"

"Yeah, dad!" Clyde called back.

"Okay. Breakfast is almost ready."

"Okay."

His heart was beating fast again. Not this time, but maybe next, or the time after that. One day Harold would come in and sit on the edge of his bed and casually explain that they were taking him back. _I'm sorry, Clyde, but it's just not working out. You're too much of a burden._

Clyde could see it so vividly that it might as well have been happening then and there.

 _I'm sorry. I'll do better._

 _It's not that easy, Clyde. You're damaged beyond repair. We've already spent so much on your doctor bills. Not to mention your medication. Your anxiety isn't getting any better._

At the dining room table, Clyde picked at his food; the only thing he ate all of was the avocado on toast. He liked that.

"How'd you sleep last night?" Howard asked, shattering the suffocating stillness.

"Okay," Clyde said easily. He had gotten good at lying.

"That's good. No nightmares?"

"Nope, just peaceful, unbroken slumber."

"Good," Howard said, looking pleased.

"Do you have any plans today, Clyde?" Harold asked.

"I was going to see if Lincoln wanted to hang out."

"How _is_ Lincoln?" Howard asked. "I haven't seen much of him lately."

"He's okay, he just has a lot of stuff going on." Clyde hoped his fathers wouldn't press him and make him cover for Lincoln. He also hoped they wouldn't look at him with pity. _We know he's sick of you. And frankly, so are we._

After breakfast, he sent a text to Lincoln and sat on his bed. Ten minutes passed, then fifteen. He was impatient and on the verge of tears when Lincoln finally got back to him an hour later.

"Sry cant hang out going Christmas shopping."

"Ok. After?"

"Maybe."

Clyde drew a heavy breath and sat the phone down. He wiped a tear away from his eye and steeled his mind against the thoughts that were sure to come.

 _He doesn't like you anymore. He has a new best friend. He wants you to leave him alone but he's too nice to say so._

When Clyde felt his breath getting short, he pulled out the picture of Lori and looked at it. She was so beautiful, like an angel.

He had to see her. Lincoln...pfft, fuck Lincoln.

He dressed in a heavy coat and pulled his tennis shoes. In the living room, his parents were snuggled on the couch watching daytime TV. "I'm going over to Lincoln's," he said as he headed for the door.

"Okay," Howard said, "have fun."

"And be safe," Harold added.

"I will."

Outside, a cold wind blew, nearly ripping the door from his hands. Frozen grass crunched underfoot. The houses along the sidewalk were dark and shuddered, which made Clyde nervous. By the time he was getting onto his bike, he was sure he was being watched. He fought against growing panic, forcing himself to move slowly, normally. By the time he was riding away, he _knew_ he was being watched, and he started pedaling faster, his heart crashing. He sailed through the December morning, the fridget wind numbing his face. When he reached the Loud house fifteen minutes later, his entire body was frozen, and he was looking forward to going inside and having a cup of cocoa.

There was one problem, though.

The van wasn't in the driveway.

 _Christmas shopping._

Well, that was a lie. Clyde was certain of that.

He parked his bike along the side of the house and went to the front door, where he rang the bell. He heard it echo through the house.

No one came.

He rang it three more times before giving up and going around back. He knocked on the sliding glass door but, again, no one came.

Frustrated, he walked backwards and looked up at the windows overlooking the backyard. No lights shone. Were they really hiding from him with the lights off?

 _They're Christmas shopping. And probably grocery shopping for the storm._

Clyde took a deep breath. Lincoln wasn't lying to him. He needed to loosen up.

Shaking his head sadly, he started back around front but froze. Was it his imagination, or did that curtain flutter? He watched it for a long time, but it didn't move again.

He climbed onto his bike and rode away. Later, he texted Luna.

"Hey, where are you guys?"

"The mall," she responded in ten minutes.

"Cool. So am I."

Well, no, he wasn't, but twenty minutes later he was. He parked his bike and went inside, fighting his way through throngs of holiday shoppers. Christmas music seasoned the air.

He saw Lynn outside Sports Locker, then Ronnie Anne (at least he thought it was) walking toward the food court. He didn't see Lori, though, and his heart sank. He _had_ to see her. He had to hear her voice and smell her scent.

"Hey, Clyde!"

Clyde started. Luan was coming toward him through the crowd, waving, a smile on her face.

 _You're not the Loud I'm looking for._

"H-Hi, Luan."

"Shopping for your dads?"

"Yeah, just a little shopping." He smiled.

Luan raised an eyebrow. "Well...good luck. This place is a madhouse."

Clyde counted to five, then turned around and followed her, hanging back so she wouldn't see him. At the food court, he saw the other Louds. There, by the door, texting, was Lori. His heart stopped in his chest and his stomach bounced. He ducked behind a column and watched her, caressing her soft face with his eyes. Luan turned and saw him, but he didn't care. Lori, Lori, Lori...

She kept staring, and he stepped behind the column.

He counted to fifty and looked again.

They were gone.


	3. Gathering Storm

_**Hey, Jack, It's a fact they're talkin' in town.  
I turn my back and you're messin' around.  
I'm not really jealous, don't like lookin' like a clown**_.

\- **Joan Jett**

 _ **There's a storm on the way  
And it's coming no matter what I say**_

 **\- Gnarles Barkley**

She was starting to get pissed. _Really_ pissed. It was a constant throbbing in her stomach, a gnawing that kept her awake at night. He rarely ever wanted to hang out, and on those rare occasions when he did, he acted like she was one of his little buddies. She didn't want to be treated like a _girl_ , but she did want to be treated like he liked her. Last Spring he acted that way. She couldn't exactly point to any one thing that indicated his affection for her (other than that dorky kiss he gave her outside his house the day she socked him – thinking of that always brought a smile to her face), but it was _there_. She could see it and feel it. Now, she might as well have been another boy.

When she saw him at the mall, her first instinct was to slap him across the back of the head as hard as she could, hopefully knocking him out of the booth and onto his ass. _Sorry, lame-o, guess I don't know my own strength_ , but as she stalked across the food court, she realized she didn't have it in her; her Lincoln, her heart was tender, and that pissed her off even more, so she wrapped her arm around his neck and ground her knuckles into his scalp as hard as she could.

"Hey, lame-o!"

He thrashed his head around and told her to cut it out, but he was laughing, which made her both happy and angry at the same time. Angry because the nuggie was supposed to freaking _hurt_ , happy because she liked the sound of his laughter.

"What'cha up to?" she asked after releasing him.

"Christmas shopping."

"Yeah, me too." That was a lie. Kind of. She had some money in her pocket and her eye open for something for her brother and mother, but she'd come to the mall largely to clear her head. It was too damn cold to walk around Royal Woods for long. The news said the storm would hit tomorrow evening and that it would be even colder. From what she saw on Channel 5, it was going to be a big one; Snowpocalypse 2017. Pretty rad.

"You hear about the snow coming?" she asked.

"Yeah, kind of," Lincoln said, "it's going to be bad, right?"

"Worse one in, like, fifty years," she said. "I'm looking forward to it."

They chatted about nothing for a few minutes. She wanted to stay longer, maybe sit down, but she didn't want to look like a fool, so she said "See ya" and left; she fought the urge to look back.

She hated feeling this way. She was supposed to be tough. That's how you got through life, by being big, mean, and hitting things, because when you were big, mean, and hit things, people didn't bother you. She learned that before she moved to Royal Woods, when she was still living in East L.A. No one bothered the tough people. But the weak people...they ate them _alive_. Her mother was weak, and so was Bobby. She loved them both dearly, but it was true. People stole from them, people used them, a bunch of boys beat Bobby up because he accidentally wore the wrong color shirt in the wrong neighborhood. When she was little, girls used to push her around on the schoolyard and call her names. The only difference between her and her other family members was that she eventually got sick of it and started popping noses. After that, things were better.

Violence doesn't solve anything, they said. Bullshit. Yes it did. It solved a _lot_. Look at all the wars they taught about in history class. The Civil War and WWII. Those didn't solve anything? The fact that people weren't still in chains or being shoved into ovens told her they did. You had to be hard and violent to get through life. Simple as that.

Only when she was around Lincoln, she didn't _feel_ hard and violent. She felt warm and tingly. She felt...she felt like a softie, and she hated it. Deep down, though, she kind of liked it. She felt good with him. At ease. Or she _did_ until he started flaking out on her. She was just starting to let her guard down, and _wham_ , an icepick to the heart. It hurt so bad sometimes she felt like crying, but she never did, because crying is for the weak. Crying doesn't solve anything. Not like violence.

She needed to talk to him. Sit him down, ask him what the hell was up and where they stood. If he wanted to be with her, she'd say yes. She'd even shout it from the rooftops. If anyone had shit to say, she'd sock them in the jaw. No more messing around. Lincoln was a great guy and she liked him. She _wanted_ people to know, she wanted them to see him and be jealous of her because she snagged herself an awesome man.

Her mind wandered. When she came back to herself, she was walking to Dollar-Rama. She shoved past a fat guy and went down an aisle. Okay. Mom first. What to get, what to get.

She roamed toward the back of the store, and heard a weather report. She looked over, and small a row of baby TV sets lining the back wall. She walked over, and saw Luan standing there, her arms crossed.

"Pretty neat, huh?" she asked, and Luan jumped.

"It's kind of scary."

Scary? She chuckled to herself. "I'm not worried. This isn't the first snowstorm we've ever had. Tell lame-o I said stay warm."

She turned and went back the way she had come. For some reason she couldn't fully grasp, she had come to dislike Luan over the past couple months. It was nothing the Loud girl had done or said (they rarely interacted), it was more on an instinct. Her mother might call it woman's intuition. Her corny jokes didn't help. God, they were so bad.

Whatever. She had shopping to do.

Miles away and nearly an hour later, the Loud children helped their father board up the first story windows with sheets of plywood. The decision to do so had been made last minute. They were on their way home when a weather report came on the radio. Tomorrow evening, the storm would roll into Royal Woods with 70 mile per hour winds. Up until that morning, there was a good chance it would turn south and they would only get the outer bands, instead, it shifted north, and they were in for a direct hit.

"Guess we better cover the windows," dad said.

They started with the back windows, dad and Lana working together while Lincoln and Lynn worked on their own. Mom stood in the backyard with her arms crossed, supervising. After almost an hour, the entire first floor was sealed up tight, save for the doors.

"It's going to be worse than '78," mom worried.

"How bad _was_ '78?" Lynn asked, wiping her hands on her shorts.

"Bad," dad said. "There were snow drifts to the tops of the houses." He chuckled. "We were stuck for two days before my dad tunneled out the front door. It took him eight hours of digging."

 _Holy shit,_ Lincoln thought, scared for the first time.

"Whoa," Lana said appreciatively. "What was he using?"

"A garden trowel."

"And it only took him eight hours? Nice."

Inside, Lincoln found Luan on the couch. On TV, a man stood in front of a map of the Midwest, pointing here and there and talking. Lincoln sat down on the far end, away from her, and watched. After a few minutes, they started showing video from areas already affected by the storm: An interstate in South Dakota, cars strewn along its length, some in ditches and others on their roofs; a power station burning in Iowa; collapsed buildings in Nebraska. In Kansas, ice coated everything, bringing down trees, powerlines, traffic lights, and even a water tower in the town of Pratt: It lay across the town square, parked cars crushed beneath it.

"God," Luan drew, her hand flying to her mouth. _That_ was coming to them.

"Yeah, it looks scary," Lincoln said, then, "but we'll be okay."

"You sound so sure."

"Of course I am." He looked at her and smiled. "Let's watch something else."

Luan changed the channel. They were just losing themselves in a show when a knock came at the door. "Got it," mom said.

Luan heard the door open. "Oh, hi, Ronnie Anne."

 _Ronnie Anne?_ Luan looked over her shoulder. The Hispanic girl stood in the doorway, her hands in her pockets. "Hi, Mrs. Loud, is Lincoln here?"

"Yes."

Luan glanced at Lincoln, who was already getting up. She took a deep breath and looked at the TV, her ears open.

"Hey, lame-o, wanna hang?"

"Uhhh...yeah, okay."

"Sweet," she said. "I got the new Call of Honor game. Wanna play?"

"Oh, boy!"

Running footsteps thumped up the stairs.

Luan took a deep breath. She could trust Lincoln. He wouldn't cheat on her. She knew that in her bones. So why was she so worried?

In his room, Lincoln sank onto his bed while Ronnie Anne knelt and popped the game into the console. "It's an early Christmas present from Bobby," she explained. She got up, grabbed two controllers, and tossed one to Lincoln. "He buys presents and then can't wait to give them." She shook her head and sat next to Lincoln. "He's such a dork. Kind of like you, lame-o."

"I guess that's why we get along," Lincoln said.

"Yeah, he's been talking about you a lot." She glanced at him, mulled over what she was going to say next, then: "What's up with you, anyway? You've been really distant. I don't see much of you anymore."

"You see me every day at lunch," Lincoln said. The loading screen finished, and the game started. Two avatars stood in a barren field. In the distance, tanks and enemy soldiers wandered aimlessly. Lincoln could feel her looking at him, but resisted the urge to turn. He hoped she dropped it.

She didn't.

"Yeah, but you're different. And you never really wanna hang out anymore. Getting to spend time with me's like pulling teeth."

Lincoln felt bad. "I just have a lot going on. That's all."

"A lot of what?"

Lincoln didn't reply. He focused on the game. Ronnie Anne had no choice but to play too. "It's been like this for a long time, Lincoln." She thought to add _and I miss you,_ but that was too mushy-gushy. She couldn't say that.

"I know," he said. "I'm sorry. It's just..."

On screen, his character took a round to the head and dropped. Seconds later, an explosion threw Ronnie Anne's into the air, killing her too.

"What?" she pressed.

He sighed. He'd been putting this off since the end of summer, when he and Luan first got together. How long was that, four months? Four months he'd been sitting on his hands, four months he'd lived in dread of the moment he would have to tell Ronnie Anne that there was someone else.

"I'm waiting," she said.

He jumped right in. "Ronnie, I know you like me, and I like you, or I used to, but...I have a girlfriend now."

Ronnie Anne's heart sank into her stomach. "You _what?"_

Lincoln sighed. "It happened over the summer, I didn't want to tell you because I didn't want to hurt you."

Ronnie Anne didn't hear him; the only sound in the world was the blood pounding against her temples. Her vision doubled, and she thought she was going explode in a ball of rage. Instead, even worse, tears flooded her eyes.

"Ronnie..." Lincoln said, reaching for her.

She slapped his arm away and got up.

"Please, I..."

"Keep the damn game," she said through her tears. "I bought it for you."

Trying so hard to fight back her tears, she fled down the stairs and out the front door. Luna passed her going up. "Hey, you okay?" she asked, but Ronnie Anne ignored her.

In the bitter cold, she gave into the storm, her body shaking. She started down the sidewalk, rubbing her eyes.

There was someone else.

Someone stole Lincoln out from under her, and why wouldn't they? He was wonderful.

That made her cry harder.

In his room, Lincoln watched her, his stomach in knots. The way she hitched as she walked, her hands to her eyes, made him feel like the biggest piece of shit in the world.

Sinking onto his bed, he slapped the controller onto the floor, where it bounded end over end and hit the console, causing the screen to go hazy for a second. He hoped he broke the damn thing.

"Linc?"

He looked up. Luan was standing in the doorway, worry on her face. "What's wrong?"

He sighed. "I told Ronnie Anne about us. Not about _us_ , but that I was with someone."

Luan nodded. "I had a feeling she liked you."

"She did," Lincoln said, "and I liked her. I mean, I still like her, but not like that, and I didn't want to hurt her."

Luan sat next to him and put her arm around his shoulder. "I know how she must feel. You're amazing."

Lincoln cracked a small grin. It always made him smile when Luan told him he was great, or wonderful, or beautiful, or sweet. The smile died quickly, though.

"I'm sorry," Luan said.

He shook his head. "Don't be. It had to happen. I should have done it months ago. I kept putting it off."

"Because you're sweet and caring and you knew it would hurt her."

"I don't feel sweet or caring," he said, and sighed.

"You are," Luan said, and kissed him on the cheek. At the touch of her lips, an electric thrill went through his body. He turned and gazed into her eyes. She grinned, and he kissed her, slipping his tongue into her mouth. She kissed him back, and he ran his fingers through her hair.

"Yuck," Lucy said from the hall. "At least shut the door."

The door closed and Luan pushed him back on the bed. Her heart pounded gently against his chest. He ran his hands up and down her arched back and lost himself in her. "You're sweet, and loving, and caring, and considerate, and everything else good and beautiful," Luan said. She stroked his cheek and gazed deeply into his eyes.

"If you say so," he said.

"I do, and I'm always right."

"Always?"

"Yep," she leaned down and kissed his forehead. "Come on, I wanna watch the news."

Lincoln's nose crinkled. "The news?"

"About the storm."

Lincoln sighed. "You're going to drive yourself crazy with that stuff."

"I know," she got up and went to the door. "You can come if you want."

"Give me a minute."

She smiled at him and left the room. Alone, Lincoln laid on his back for a moment before getting up and going to the window. Ronnie Anne was gone, but he could still see here, stumbling down the sidewalk and crying. He sighed.

In the hall, Luna stopped him. "What's up with Ronnie Anne? She ran outta here crying."

"Nothing," Lincoln said. "I just told her I had a girlfriend."

Luna blinked. "Dude, you _just_ told her? She really likes you."

Lincoln felt even worse. "I didn't want... _that_ to happen."

"Yeah, I guess I see your point."

In the living room, Luan, Lori, Leni, Lynn, mom, and dad were shoved onto the couch watching the news of Channel 4. As he entered, it cut from the weatherman back to one of the anchors. A picture of a man with scraggily hair and stubble appeared over her right shoulder, and everyone groaned. "I wanna see the weather!" Luan said.

"In other news, a jury today convicted Eric Wayne Freeman of the 2014 slaying of Detroit taxi driver Khaled Asam. The jury took just fifteen minutes to return a guilty verdict, stunning the defense. Freeman, a drifter from Texas, shot and killed Asam on February 26, 2014 in a robbery gone wrong. Freeman has been convicted of seven similar murders across the country, and will begin serving a life sentence at Upper Peninsula State Prison this weekend."

"They should fry his ass," Lynn said.

"Lynn," mom said sharply.

"Sorry."

Lincoln sat on the arm of the couch next to Lori. "What's the latest?"

"Oh, just the end of the world," she said. "They're calling it 'Snowmageddon.'"

"I thought it was 'Snowpocalypse,'" Luan said.

"It's whatever hype the media wants it to be," mom said. "I know one thing: It's going to be _bad_."

Before dark, dad boarded up the second story windows, and mom made a last minute trip to the grocery store. Lincoln went with her, and was shocked at the chaos he saw, empty shelves, people fighting over gallons of milk, cans and bottles strewn across the floor. Every register was open, but the lines still snaked to the back of the store. The din was so loud he could barely hear the Christmas music coming from the speakers.

It took them three hours to grab half a cart full of things. At home, he sat in front of the TV and watched the news with Luan without being asked.

He told her about the scene at the grocery store.

"I'm starting to think you're right to be worried."

"I told you, Linc," she said, "I'm always right."


	4. Morning Sickness

Luan Loud came slowly and peacefully awake in the blue predawn light, her mind clear and her body refreshed. Lincoln was asleep with his arm thrown over her shoulders, and she snuggled closer to him, relishing the warmth they created. She was afraid to look at the clock, because it was probably almost time for her to go back to her own room. _If I don't see it, it's not real,_ she thought, but opened her eyes anyway. 5:54am. The alarm was set for 6.

She sighed and turned to Lincoln. "Linc?"

He snored, and she smiled. He was so cute when he was asleep. Of course, he was cute no matter _what_ he did.

"Linc?"

Nothing.

She kissed him on the forehead and slipped out of her bed, goosebumps racing up and down her naked body as the cold air washed over it. She shuddered (what's the heat set at anyway?) and picked her nightgown up off the floor, slipping it over her head. The silky fabric brushed against her nipples, and she shivered again.

After turning off the alarm, she went into her own room and got under the covers. The sheets were cool, and her teeth chattered as she drew her body tight. She loved sleeping in Lincoln's room, but _hated_ coming back to her own bed: It always felt so big and cold and empty. In fact, the nights she slept in it were the nights she didn't sleep at all; she had grown accustomed to Lincoln's presence and his touch. It soothed her and made her drift happily off. When she was alone, she yearned for him. Lately, she yearned so badly that she made herself sick, and had to run to the bathroom and throw up. She felt like a junkie sometimes, and Lincoln was her fix; she knew vaguely that that might not be entirely healthy, but she didn't care. She was happy and that was all that mattered.

She closed her eyes and tried to get back to sleep, but the nausea slowly came upon her as it did more mornings than not. She licked her lips and tried to ignore it, but bile began coating her throat, and she knew she was going to hurl.

Again.

 _Wow, Linc, you should come with side effect warnings like the pills on TV._

Holding back a tidal wave of puke, she rushed to the bathroom and reached the commode just as the storm broke. Falling to her knees, she lifted the lid and hurled, splattering the bowl with chunks of last night's dinner. When she thought she was done, she leaned back, but another wave of nausea crashed over her, and she puked again. Tears streamed from the corners of her eyes. She coughed. Her stomach rolled. Acid filled her mouth, and she puked a third time.

"Jesus," she panted, gripping the lip of the bowl, and chuckled sardonically. Nothing like being sick in the morning.

Heh.

Morning sickness.

She froze.

Morning sickness?

Cold terror swept through her. No, it couldn't be, Lincoln always...it wasn't possible. They were safe.

But why was her heart in her throat, and why was she suddenly _sure_ she was pregnant?

She knelt before the toilet for a long time, trembling with terror. It couldn't be...but what if it _was?_ What if she was carrying her brother's child?

The prospect scared her so bad that she threw up again.

At some point, she stumbled back to bed and lay awake for a long time, her eyes wide open and her mind racing. Their parents would find out. She might get sent somewhere, _Lincoln_ might get sent somewhere. They would be taken away from each other, and so too, probably, would their baby.

That last part affected her more than she thought possible.

"Luan?"

She blinked. They were gathered in Lori's room. Outside, snow was starting to fall; a smattering covered patches of the backyard.

"Sorry," she said. She hadn't been herself all day; her mind was on what was (or was not) growing in her stomach.

Lori rolled her eyes. "Let's try this one more time: Does everyone have everything they need for the storm? Candles, extra blankets, flashlights?"

Everyone nodded and said that they did.

A pregnancy test. She needed a pregnancy test. She couldn't just walk into the corner drugstore and pick one up, could she? Even if they let her buy one without giving her a hard time, someone might see her. Royal Woods was a relatively small town, and news travels fast in small towns if the wrong person saw or heard the wrong thing. _Well, hiya, Lynn, I just wanted to ask what's going on with Luan, I saw her buying a pregnancy test today down at the store..._

She shivered.

"Luan!"

"Yes, I have everything I need."

"Lisa, how's the generator coming?"

"Well," Lisa said, fiddling with her glasses, "it's not quiet done yet, and I can't promise it will be done before we lose power, but I plan on attempting."

Lisa had been working on a generator that ran on household trash. Dad's old gas generator would get them by if she didn't finish, but from what she said, it was cheaper, clearer burning, and would produce twice as much power, and power is something that the Loud house used a lot of.

"Okay," Lori said, and started talking about something else but Luan tuned her out. Was she going to be a mother? The thought alternately terrified and overjoyed her. She touched her stomach and tried to sense whether she had a passenger or not, but couldn't.

She noticed Lincoln watching her strangely, and smiled at him.

-2-

Night turned to day, the dirty gray light creeping across the walls like vines along a lattice. Clyde stared up at the ceiling, the covers pulled up to his chin. Did he sleep? He thought so. He hoped he did, because Lori was beside him for a while, and if he wasn't dreaming, he was crazy.

Crazy Clyde, that was him, the boy no one loved, the boy whose every waking moment was an prolonged anxiety attack, the boy who pined for a woman who didn't want him. Dr. Lopez asked him once if he wasn't so attracted to Lori specifically _because_ she wasn't attracted to _him._

 _She's safe, because she isn't interested in you, therefore you won't have to ever open your heart and risk getting hurt._

He laughed at that. No, Lori was beautiful and perfect and holy and pure. But he wondered. Lucy was closer in age to him. What if he tried to get her to like him?

That thought disturbed him. Why, he couldn't say.

 _There's no real risk involved._

Maybe not, but he still loved her. He yearned for her the way he imagined an alcoholic yearned for his drink of choice, his body aching and trembling. Sometimes she was all he could think about, and, every once in a blue moon, it became too much, and he pounded his fists against the sides of his head. _Leave me alone! Leave me alone!_ Thoughts of Lori were usually happy, but at 5am, after a long, sleepless night, he was so sick of thinking about her that he could scream in frustration, and sometimes he did, startling his parents. Once, over the summer, he jabbed a pencil into the soft skin between his thumb and forefinger, hoping the pain would drive her out of his head. It worked, but it hurt; it left an ugly scar that he looked at sometimes.

Tonight the thoughts hadn't been bad. They didn't race through his mind until he was sick to his stomach and his head hurt. They strutted slowly by, allowing him to admire and savor them. In his dream (if dream it was), he was staring up at the ceiling when she slipped under his covers and threw her arm across his chest. He turned to her, and she smiled up at him. "Hi," she said.

"Hi," he said, his chest tight. He thought to ask her why she was here, but she kissed his cheek, and he didn't care. She was there and she was warm and her smell was everywhere. He gazed into her eyes, then looked back at the ceiling, happier than he had ever been in his life. For a long time they lay that way, then she was gone and he was alone. He wasn't aware of crossing the threshold of dreams, so maybe it _wasn't_ a dream. Maybe he _was_ crazy.

If being crazy got Lori Loud to kiss his cheek and lay in his bed, he hoped he was; at least he'd be happy for once.

Sighing, Clyde sat up and rolled his neck. He grabbed his glasses off the nightstand and slipped them on, the world swimming into focus. He turned on the clock radio and listened through five minutes of morning zoo banter before a weather report came on.

"Hunker down, folks, Winter Storm Carrie is on the way. The entire listening area is under a Blizzard Warning with snow totals expected to reach over two and a half feet in the Detroit metro area. Snow should begin falling today about noon, and will last through Saturday evening, with the peak coming on Saturday afternoon. Stay off of those roads."

Clyde listened impassively. It sounded bad, but not as bad as the storm raging inside of him. At least this storm would end.

Sighing, he got out of bed and used the bathroom, being as quiet as possible to avoid disturbing his dads. Back in his room, he dropped onto his bed and thought about texting Lincoln to see if he wanted to hang out, but he knew where that would get him.

He needed to see Lori, though.

He checked his phone. It was 7am. It would be an hour and a half before breakfast was done and he could get away, ninety long, tormented minutes. He grabbed the picture of Lori from under his mattress and laid it on his chest.

1...

Lori smiled at him.

2...

Lori walked past him, and he looked after her, the smell of her perfume caressing his nostrils.

3...

Mother Superior ripped the sheets off his bed and slapped the wet spot on the bed with a ruler. "What is this?"

"I-I'm sorry," he said, looking down at his feet. Shame colored his cheeks.

She grabbed him by the back of his shirt and whacked the backs of his legs with the ruler. He howled.

4...

Kids passed him in the halls at Royal Woods Consolidated, their faces blank. His heart started to pound. At an intersection, he turned, and a nun flew at him, only instead of holding a ruler, she had an ax.

5...

Lori crawled into his bed and stared at him with a placid intensity that made him uncomfortable. "I don't like you," she said.

6...

His fathers dragged him kicking and screaming back into the orphanage. The nuns waited, their arms crossed over their chests. When he saw them, he screamed, because they were dead, and their faces were rotting.

7...

Lori sat in a lighted window, brushing her hair. He watched from a bush he and Lincoln had used as a fort earlier in the day, a pair of binoculars pressed to his eyes. She turned, and for a horrible moment he thought she saw him, but she gave no indication that she had.

8...

Nuns gathered around him with whips in their hands. He was naked, cold, his back was bloody. Kids with no faces crowded around, watching...

He flipped the picture over and looked at it, a small smile playing at the corner of his lips. She always made it better. She was magic.

Still smiling, he put the picture on the nightstand and laced his hands behind his back. He _really_ wanted to see her today, even if he had to hide in the bushes again. He didn't mind. It occurred to him that he wouldn't be able to visit her tomorrow or Sunday or whenever the storm was over, and that brought his spirits down a little. Then again, what was stopping him? A little wind and snow? Hahaha. That wasn't much of a deterrent when you were madly in love with a beautiful woman. Nothing was, in fact, if you loved her the way he loved Lori.

-3-

 _Bastard!_

Ronnie Anne Santiago punched her pillow again, her fist sinking into its soft center. She didn't like that. She wanted to hit something hard and unyielding, like the wall (or Lincoln Loud's head), but she hit the pillow once more.

It was just after seven in the morning, and she had barely slept last night. She tossed, turned, sighed, and finally, when she was absolutely sure that not a single soul could hear her, cried. Now, before she was even out of bed and halfway ready to face the day, Lincoln was texting her and telling her how "sorry" he was, how he "didn't mean to hurt" her. Yeah, well, the captain of the Titanic didn't mean to sail it not an iceberg, but it still sank, didn't it?

Taking deep breaths and flexing her fingers (God, she wanted to hit something so bad), she got up and started pacing.

 _I_ liked _you, Lincoln Loud. I really did. I thought you were a good guy, but I was wrong. I was stupid and I was wrong and I'll never open my heart again because everyone's a fucking scumbag._

She reached the window and almost sank her fist into it.

 _Who is she, Lincoln? What...what does she have that I don't?_

That thought made her stop. In her head it sounded desperate, needy.

And that made her even angrier. She spun on her heels, panting, and laid her eyes on her headboard. She strode over to it, drew back her fist, and swung. Her fist connected, a lightning bolt of pain shot up her arm and into her shoulder. It hurt, but it felt good at the same time. She hit it again and again, knocking it loudly against the wall; she only stopped when her knuckles were scraped, skinned, and bloody. Her hand trembled.

"Roberta!" her mother called. "What was that?"

"Nothing, mom!" She cradled her wounded hand in her good one, looking and it and feeling a mixture of rage and dark satisfaction.

Her phone chimed, and she snatched it up.

"I know ur mad at me and u have every right to be but I never wanted to hurt u."

She shook with wrath, squeezing the phone so hard she was surprised the screen didn't crack. I didn't mean to hurt you, dur, dur, dur. I care about you. Yeah, okay, you prick, you goofy, weak, white haired bastard. She flung the phone onto her bed and put her hands on her hips. She had to get a grip. If she didn't, she'd lost control totally, and then she really _would_ break a window or punch Lincoln in the head. Usually when she got like this she would take a long walk, but it was too fucking cold for that: The radio said it was below freezing. To hell with that.

Instead, she picked the phone back up, sat down, and started typing.

 _I'm hurt Lincoln. You knew I liked u and I though u liked me to._

She stopped and read it. No, she didn't like that. She tried again, but the results were similarly unacceptable. She tried once more, but finally gave up and dropped the phone. Grabbing her pillow, she hugged it close. No matter what she said, she thought, it was too close, too close to the bone, too close to her heart, and she hated bearing her soul like that, because when you strip away all the outer stuff, you're vulnerable. Screw being vulnerable.

 _You should have made your move sooner._

Yeah, she should have. She should have come right out and told him how she felt and built something with him instead of leaving their relationship dangling in limbo and assuming things. How mad could she really be? They weren't even together, not even officially. Was expecting Lincoln to act like she was his girlfriend asking too much? Was it...unfair?

She took a deep breath. Maybe it was, but the thing is he _knew_ , he fucking _knew_. They were well on the road to being together and he threw it all away for someone else.

 _What does she have that I don't? What does she do for him that I haven't?_

 _For one, she probably isn't afraid to declare her feelings. For two, she probably kisses him and holds his hand instead of giving him Indian burns and wedgies._

Of course. Lincoln was sensitive. That's what drew her to him in the first place. It made sense in retrospect that he needed tender love and care. He was the type of guy who needed a deeply-felt, mushy-gushy relationship.

And she didn't give that to him.

She _couldn't_.

Hot tears welled up in her eyes, and she buried her face into her pillow. What the fuck was _wrong_ with her? Why did she have to be such a fucking hardcase? Why couldn't she lighten up?

Her personality was shit, she decided, and it had lost her probably the best guy she would ever find. It was her fault. All her fault. She couldn't blame him for wanting someone else. Hell, if someone _just like her_ came along the pike, she'd probably want someone else too.

She took a deep, watery breath and let it out. She should go talk to him, show him she wasn't a bitch, show him she was okay with it. Then, whenever he and his girlfriend broke up, she would be there, and she wouldn't lose him this time, she would hold onto him and everything he needed and wanted and desired. She could hold his hand and kiss him. In public. In front of everyone. The thought made her queasy (she didn't want anyone to see her soft side), but if that's what it took to get Lincoln Loud back and make him happy, she would do it and fucking _smile_. No more with the lame-o crap, no more nuggies or any of that other stuff. That's not what Lincoln needed. She stood up, suddenly burning with hope. She threw on her hoodie and told her mom she was going to Lincoln's for a few minutes.

Outside, the air was bitterly cold; thick white clouds swirled overhead. The streets were eerily empty. She saw a few people weatherproofing their houses (a man boarding up windows, another moving patio furniture into a shed, but other than that, she was alone. The snow was not supposed to start until noon, but as she turned onto Franklin Avenue, the first flakes drifted lazily from the sky. She shivered and hunched over.

As she approached Lincoln's house, her heart started beating faster and her stomach twisted into knots.

 _What are you doing?_

 _Going to tell Lincoln how I feel...and that I'm here for him._

 _That's pretty pathetic. And desperate. 'Oh, Lincoln, I love you so much, you're so wonderful, you can do no wrong. Whenever you're done with your current bitch, I'll be waiting for you like a fool._

That gave her pause. That _is_ how it would look. It's how it _felt_.

She couldn't do that. She had to have some pride.

For a long time, she stood across the street from Lincoln's house, trying to make up her mind. Finally, with a sigh, she turned around and went home.

-4-

Eric Wayne Freeman, also known as The Cross Country Killer, sat in a holding cell at the Detroit city lock-up, his hands placidly on his knees. His eyes were closed and his lips were slightly parted. Passing by, you might think he was praying or meditating. He wasn't. He was remembering the murders he had committed.

Those thoughts were happy thoughts for Freeman, who had been in jail since January 2015; in absence of the real thing, they were all he had.

It was something stupid that brought him down: A broken taillight and a bored cop with nothing better to do than bust peoples' balls. Wasn't it always, though? The pigs liked to think they were so smart, but it was never good police work that caught a Son of Sam or a Charles Manson, it was something totally and utterly stupid, usually on the killer's part. A parking ticket a block from a crime scene, or boasting to a cellmate. It was his fault he was sitting on this cold concrete slab. He owned that. He stumbled, and when you stumble, it's easy for someone to knock you over.

That didn't mean he planned to spend the rest of his life in prison, though. Oh no. He was going to bust out. Someday, sometime, in twenty days or twenty years. And when he got out, the first thing he would do is kill someone just out of spite. Hell, if he could, he'd kill a guard or two; they were pigs anyway. They threw their weight around and treated you like dirt just because they could, and the law let them. How's that for justice?

In his mind's eye, Freeman saw the last victim, the Arab cabbie: He watched the gun jam into the back of his head, watched as the trigger pulled and brain, bone, and bits of brain matter showered the windshield; the luckless cab drive slumped against the wheel, hitting the horn. "A robbery gone wrong" they said, because he took twenty bucks from the guy's pocket. The money wasn't the motive, though, it was extra, the icing on the cake. He was going to shoot him anyway.

Freeman smiled and opened his eyes. There were three other men in the cell with him: A Hispanic man with a neck tattoo, a bald black man, and a scrawny white guy with bad acne and Buddy Holly glasses. Freeman had been planning their murder for hours, but probably wouldn't follow through with it: Some men thought of women to pass the time, others of cherished memories...he thought of killing people.

It had always been that way, even when he was a little boy. He would fantasize about killing everyone in his neighborhood and leaving their bodies where they fell. Sometimes he even thought of doing things to the bodies, unspeakable things.

Presently, a guard appeared at the door on his morning rounds.

"Hey, Mack, you got the time?" Freeman asked.

"10:30," the guard said.

"I thought the bus was supposed to be here at 7."

"Yeah, well, it's running late."

Freeman nodded to the window behind him. Not long ago, he had looked out to see snow misting over the city, blotches here and there on the sidewalk. "You really gonna send us out in that?" The Upper Peninsula State Prison was four hours away. By the time they got there, the whole state would be under a foot of snow.

"Justice doesn't wait for a little bit of snow."

The guard left, and Freeman made a mocking face. _JuStiCe DoEsN't WaIt fOr A lItTle BiT oF snOw._

Freeman shook his head and closed his eyes again, sinking back into warm thoughts of death and destruction.

Soon, he thought.

But even he didn't know just _how_ soon he would get to kill again.


	5. State of Affairs

At 10:21am CDT, the Governor of Michigan appeared on Channel 8. Standing at a podium, he was flanked by the commander of the Michigan National Guard and the Captain of the Michigan State Police.

"...all road travel is banned for non-emergency personnel effective noon today through noon Monday. Anyone on the road during these times will be arrested. We are expecting very high winds and heavy snowfall, the worst of which will occur tomorrow afternoon. Please, stay in your homes."

It was already snowing across much of the state, the outer bands of Winter Storm Carrie stretching as far east as Detroit. In the Upper Peninsula, it was coming down at a rate of an inch an hour by 10:30. At 10:35, the first person to die in the state filled his Jeep on an icy road. He was pinned in the wreckage as flames consumed him.

In Battle Creek, a transformer blew when a gust of wind knocked a chain-link fence into it; the resulting boom was heard for five miles in every direction. Windows rattled and walls trembled. Most of the town was plunged into darkness.

A fleet of plow trucks roamed the interstates, in places escorted by National Guard vehicles. One slid off the road near Hackanaw, crashing headlong into a ditch after a minivan traveling in front of it fishtailed and slammed into the dividing wall between lanes. In spots, the snow accumulated so rapidly that people were forced to abandon their vehicles and trudge out on foot. News choppers filmed crooked lines of stalled cars on I-94 east of Lake Michigan and the dozens of refugees fleeing them.

In Royal Woods, the snow was light at 11:00am, and visibility was good. An emergency shelter administered by the local Red Cross was established in the gymnasium of Royal Woods Consolidated. Eight people where had settled there by 11:10; the elderly and the sick, those who could not afford to be snowbound in their homes for days on end. It was stocked with beds, blankets, medicine, food, and warm clothes; there were also sixty-five body bags stored in the cafeteria kitchen, just in case. At the police station on Main Street, Sheriff David Katz sat in his office and watched the snow falling. He had twenty-five deputies out patrolling the streets. It was their responsibility to look out for fallen trees, downed power lines, or collapsed roofs. A National Guard unit was stationed in Harkfield, seven miles to the north, and would render assistance if necessary. Katz hoped it _wouldn't_ become necessary. He had all the respect in the world for servicemen and women, but Royal Woods was _his_ town. He'd been elected sheriff five times, and if he called in outside help during the storm, he would look weak. He might even lose the election in March.

At noon, the travel ban went into effect across the state, and within the first hour over fifty people had been arrested for breaking it, many of them in the city of Detroit. Most areas west were already finding it near impossible to drive even if they wanted to.

On Franklin Avenue, the Loud family hunkered down as the snow began to pick up around 1. Sporadic wind gusts shook the walls and roared in the eaves. Most of the family was in the living room, watching live reports of the storm bearing down on them. Luan was upstairs in her room, trying to think of a way to voice her suspicions to Lincoln. She didn't _know_ she was pregnant, and she didn't want to tell him until she knew, but part of her grinned at the thought of saying _I'm pregnant_. Another part, a much bigger part, was scared shitless...for many reasons.

"Man," Luna sighed. She was sitting in her bed with her radio in her lap. A weather report was on. "This storm crap's kicking my music off."

"Listen to a CD," Luan heard herself say as if from a great distance.

"I don't want to listen to a CD, or Youtube. I want to listen to the radio."

"Listen to it, then."

"Whatever."

Outside, in the rising tempest, Clyde McBride crouched in a bush and peered up at a certain window, his hands shoved into the pockets of his red fur-lined parka and his face tingling from the cold. The bush was visible from the back door, but was so dense that even void of vegetation, no one would be able to see him.

He had been there for two hours staring at the spot where Lori's window had been just the other day. In its place was a piece of plywood. He knew she was behind it, though...he could _feel_ her presence, and that was good enough: Several times he considered going up to the front door and knocking, but he was afraid that Lincoln would send him away, and in his current state, he didn't think he could handle the rejection. This would have to do.

 _You know we love you, Clyde, right?_ Howard asked him that morning, making him uncomfortable.

 _Sure,_ he replied.

 _We love you with all our hearts and always will,_ Harold added. _Never doubt that._

Why were they telling him that? Was he talking in his sleep again? Did they hear him whimpering as the dreams tormented him in the night? That scared him, because he didn't know what he said when he was asleep, and if they knew just how messed up he really was, they might not want him anymore. The fact that they took the time to tell him how much they loved him gave him a glimmer of hope. Maybe they really _were_ telling the truth. Maybe he _could_ trust them unconditionally.

Then again, that's how you set yourself up for a fall: You trusted and hoped, and then the rug was yanked out from under you and you fell flat on your ass.

With Lori, it was different because...

...because he was already flat on his ass.

A gust of wind raked him, and he shuddered. His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he checked it. Harold: The storm is getting worse. Please come home.

Home.

Yes, he would like to go there very much.

In another part of town, Ronnie Anne Santiago sat cross-legged on the couch, watching as scenes of destruction flashed across the TV screen. National Guardsmen were rescuing people trapped in their vehicles across Wisconsin, Illinois, and Michigan. The roof of a nursing home in Gary caved in, killing thirteen people, and a small number of looters ransacked businesses in Chicago: Smashed windows, overturned police cars, and fires jumped out at her. Yesterday, she told Luan Loud that she wasn't afraid, and maybe then she wasn't, but she was now.

 _Luan Loud._

That made her think of her brother, Lincoln. She took a deep breath and tried to push those thoughts away. She was no longer going to let that boy dominate her consciousness. It was over, after all. He had someone else and he was probably happy. Pining after him like a dweeb was stupid.

"Hey, sis, what'cha watching?"

Bobby dropped onto the couch next to her.

"The news," she said.

"Yeah? What's up in newsland?"

"Just the end of the world."

Bobby watched with growing interest as video clips of havoc played one after another. By the time the news went to commercial, he was sitting forward with his arms on his legs. "Daaaamn," he drew, then looked uncomfortably up at the ceiling. "You think...you think we'll be okay?"

Ronnie Anne glanced up and studied the ceiling. Their house was thirty-five years old, shabby, and drafty. "I don't know," she finally said.

In Detroit, Eric Wayne Freeman watched out the barred window as snow fell in the streets. A traffic light swung in the wind, cycling from green, to yellow, to red even though not a single soul was stirring.

"We're probably gonna stay the whole weekend," the black guy said. If Freeman remembered, his name was Charlie.

"Yeah," Freeman said, craning his neck to look out the window. "There's no way they're gonna move us in this." 

A half hour later, to his great surprise, three guards led him and his cellmates through the building and into the parking garage, where a prison bus idled. If there's one thing more powerful than a declaration from the Governor, Freeman thought, it's money. Someone greased someone's palm and said, "We gotta get those guys in here ASAP." Had to be.

There were already two other prisoners on the bus. Freeman, his hands cuffed in front of him, was shoved into a seat halfway to the back. One of the guards sat in the seat across from him, and removed a revolver from his hip. He sat it across his lap and let Freeman get a long look at it.

"Try anything, you're dead," the guard said.

Freeman flashed an innocent grin. "Wouldn't think of it," he said, but his mind was already working. If he could get that gun away, he could bust out of here, or at least die trying, which looked a whole lot better than where he was going otherwise.

The bus pulled out of the parking garage and onto the desolate, snow-swept street. It was starting to come down heavier, the buildings looming out of it like tombs out of cemetery mist. The back tires skidded, and the bus shook. At an intersection, a massive orange snow plow with a blinking orange light on its roof sped by, salt spilling from its back and falling across the pavement like diamonds. Freeman watched it go, thinking of all the fun he could have if he stole one of those. Hell, you could crush people, cars, and even buildings, and kept on trucking.

A half mile later, the bus turned onto the interstate and started north. No other traffic moved in either lane: Ahead, a tractor trailer was parked under an overpass, its caution lights winking rhythmically. They were going ten miles per hour, and Freeman was beginning to think it would be a long, long, trip.


	6. Nightfall

**Before we get started, I just wanted to say something: I am deeply hurt by being called "disgusting" and being told my stories are "insane" and "crap." I have been crying nonstop since yesterday, and am in fact typing this missive through a sheen of tears.**

 **But seriously, guys, cut it out, because the more you tell me I'm horrible, the more tempted I am to write a graphic and detailed sex scene between Lincoln and Luan that would make your head explode. I might even throw Lynn and Ronnie Anne into the mix just for the hell of it.**

 **Another thing: Some people don't seem entirely thrilled with the Eric Wayne Freeman character. Trust me, he's going to play a major part in the story later on.**

The first thing to go was the TV: The screen went dark at 5:28pm while Lola and Lana were watching cartoons. Several times during the previous two hours the signal cut out only to return moments later. This time it didn't. "Lovely," Lola said, "there goes my evening."

Most of the others had drifted away from the living room and were embarked on their own tasks. Lucy was writing a poem about the storm; Lynn was bouncing a basketball in the upstairs hallway and dodging her siblings as though they were competritors; Leni was painting Lori's nails; and Lincoln was preparing reading a comic book in his room. They had all been outside in the snow at one point or another: It was wet, heavy, and five inches deep across the backyard. A bone-freezing wind blew, shaking trees, power lines, and everything else.

Presently, Luan sat in the kitchen with a mug of hot chocolate and watched through the back door as snow fell in slanted sheets. Beyond ten or fifteen feet, the gathering twilight was a white, smoky blur: She could make out someone's porch light shining in the din, but little else.

Dad had proposed the idea of everyone sleeping together in the living room. Though he didn't say anything, Luan knew he was afraid of the roof collapsing: Their house was old and not in the best structural shape. Luan wondered after the idea of hunkering in the living room, because if the roof collapsed, the second floor might very well go too, which meant they'd have _more_ debris raining down on them, but she didn't say anything. She took a long sip and let her thoughts turn to her possible pregnancy. She had to find a way to know for sure. She considered talking to Lori, but she didn't know how her sister would take the news. She was against hers and Lincoln's relationship in the beginning for this very reason. She thought of going to Lisa, but after the events of October, she wasn't sure she could trust her.

She had to tell _someone_ , though. She needed to get it off of her chest if nothing else.

Outside, wind driven snow danced across the white expanse: Enough had fallen since they came in to obliterate their footprints. The only sign they had been there in the first place was a snowman near the fence, his eyes black coal and his nose a twisted stick.

Luan finished off her hot chocolate, sat the mug in the sink, and went upstairs, pausing at the top step and debating with herself on what she should do. Finally, she went to Lisa's door and knocked.

"Enter."

Inside, Lisa was working on what looked like a futuristic crockpot: It sat on her desk, all chrome, black knobs, and plastic. This, Luan supposed, was the generator she'd been talking about.

"Hey, are you almost done?"

"Maybe," Lisa replied, turning. Her face was red and sweaty. "I'm hoping that last calibration did the trick. This baby was producing so much heat that it nearly singed my eyebrows. If we put it into use in its current state, the house would catch fire and would we all most likely burn to death."

"When you're done, I need to talk to you."

"Alright," Lisa nodded. She turned back to the device. "Give me...half an hour."

"Okay."

In her room, she dropped onto her bed and tried to block the thoughts battering her. If she was pregnant, her parents couldn't know Lincoln was the father. All of her sisters would know, and that scared her, because one might break down and tell. If none did, and it was left up to her, she would lie, how she didn't know. Maybe she'd say she was raped. No, she didn't think she could say that. It would kill her parents. She'd have to tell a version of the truth: That she willingly had sex and got pregnant. They would angry and disappointed; she hated it when her parents felt that way, but she could handle it.

But what would they tell them about the father? They would demand she tell them, and she would have to say _something_.

Then, putting that aside, what if she _was_ pregnant, and the baby was born with something wrong? It was her brother's after all.

For the first time since she fell in love with Lincoln, Luan realized just how disturbed the relationship was. Her stomach turned, and she ran to the bathroom, puking into the toilet. When she was done, she flushed and got to her feet.

"I suppose this is what you wanted to see me about," Lisa said from the doorway, her hands clasped behind her back.

Luan washed her mouth out with water from the sink and spat. "Yes," she said.

"Well," Lisa said. Behind her, Lynn tossed a football and ran ahead to catch it, tripping over her feet and crashing to the floor. Lola and Lana appeared at the top of the stairs, bickering. "Follow me."

Lisa led Luan into her room and closed the door. Lilly was asleep in her crib.

"How long have you been experiencing it?" Lisa asked.

"A couple days."

"Just nausea and vomiting?"

"Yes."

Lisa sighed. "I don't have anything on hand, but if you'll give me until tomorrow, assuming this snowstorm doesn't wipe us off the face of the earth, I should be able to concoct a rudimentary pregnancy test."

Hearing that word, _pregnancy,_ from someone else, in regards to her, was strange and frightening.

"Until then, I advise you to drink plenty of fluids and get plenty of rest. Don't overexert yourself. Also, keep a log of all vomiting incidents and how you feel. You very well could have simply contracted a stomach bug, or something else could be wrong. We won't know until you take the test. Try not to worry or stress yourself."

"But what if I am pregnant?" Luan worried. "What will I tell mom and dad? They can't know it's Lincoln's."

"I agree. If worse comes to worst, I can give you something to flush your system."

Luan blinked. Flush her system? What could would _that_ do?

"A chemical abortion, in other words."

" _What?"_

Lisa shrugged. "It's a simple matter, especially at this stage."

The thought of aborting her baby turned Luan's stomach. "I-I don't know if I can do that."

"You should," Lisa said, then, realizing how callous she sounded, she added, softer, "the probability that the baby will be born with significant genetic defects is very high. I understand that you and Lincoln are in love and that's wonderful, but you must understand that you are still genetically siblings, which means any children born to you will most likely suffer physical or mental deformities. That doesn't mean that they _will_ , of course, only that there is a very high likelihood. If you want to have this child, if you even are pregnant, is up to you, but there _are_ options."

Luan's head spun. "I-I don't know. I have to think about it."

Lisa patted her hand. "Just relax and try to take it easy."

Sitting in her room, she found that relaxing was the last thing she could do.

A mile and a half away, Clyde McBride watched the rising fury of the storm from his bedroom window. The snow was coming down much faster now. There was less wind than he expected, but he supposed that would come tomorrow. He started counting the flakes as they fell in a vain attempt to distract himself from the growing _need_ inside of him. He needed to see Lori. And, yes, he needed to see Lincoln too. He was tired of being on the outs with him. He wanted to go to him, beg his forgiveness for whatever he may have done wrong, and ask him to please still be friends with him.

He wanted to go do it now, but it was getting dark, and his dads probably wouldn't let him leave the house.

 _You could_ sneak _out._

No, he couldn't. Maybe if it was just the storm, but not with the storm _and_ nightfall.

He kicked himself for not doing it while he was there earlier. Why was he so damn _stupid?_ He should have known that when he was alone and it was dark that he would start having the same thoughts and the same worries. He had them every night.

At dinner, he ate while his dads discussed the storm: Yesterday they set the gas generator up in the garage and bought several kerosene heaters from Lowes Depot. The lights had been flickering on and off for over an hour, and Harold was worrying that the power would go out soon and that they wouldn't have enough gas. Howard reminded him that they had specifically bought enough to last through Wednesday.

"The power will probably still be out by then."

"It's possible, but we'll get through the storm, and that's what matters. If we need more, I'll walk to Flip's."

Clyde spent the rest of the evening watching TV with his dads. First, the news, then, when they lost the signal, DVDs. He liked hanging out with them. It made him feel good. It made him momentarily forget his fears. Outside, the wind shrieked through the empty, snow-covered streets.

Three miles across town, Billy "Flip" Sawyer sat in his office, a bottle of whiskey between his legs and a hot dog half eaten on the cluttered desk before him. He was half drunk and starting to feel drowsy.

He'd been drinking much of the day: He only had a few customers after the travel ban went into effect, and he was thinking of closing up shop. No one would be fool enough to go out on _that_ on foot for a slushie or a pack of cigarettes. He didn't look forward to going home, though. He lived alone in a dingy apartment over the hardware store, and walking through the door every evening was like admitting defeat. Plus, he couldn't take his truck because of the ban, so he'd have to walk the mile and a half, a prospect that made him cold and tired just entertaining it. He'd probably be better off just staying the night here.

Sometimes he did just that, passing out with his head on the desk. In the morning he woke stiff and groggy, his head pounding and his mouth tasting like the ass end of a horse.

He _hated_ those days.

With a sigh, Flip took a long pull from the bottle, set it aside, and got up. In the store proper, flickering florescent lights bathed dirty floors, stained tile walls, and shelves crammed with cheap, damaged, or expired product: Cupcakes, cereal, potato chips, donuts, and beef jerky. Flip believed in saving money. He wasn't rich, after all. He didn't have a pot to piss in, so if he cut corners and skimmed a little off the top, what of it? He wasn't doing it to take fancy vacations or pay for a beach house in Boca Raton, he was doing it to put food on his table and whiskey in his stomach.

He was on his way to lock the front door when a pair of headlights appeared in the mist. He frowned. What was this dumbass doing out?

The headlights shook and spun. With drawing horror, Flip watched as the car skidded toward the gas pumps.

Liquor slows reaction times, and Flip wasn't the fast man alive even when he was sober: He was half way to the shutoff value when the car sideswiped the pumps. Gas sprayed everywhere, catching on a spark: Fire _whumped_ into life. Flip reached the value and pulled it down, preventing the fire from reaching the big underground tanks. Outside, flames engulfed the car. The driver side door flung open and someone stumbled out. They, too, were engulfed.

Flip was stricken. He didn't know what to do.

The fire extinguisher!

He grabbed it from under the counter and rushed into the storm. The luckless driver was rolling in a snow bank, howling as their flesh melted from their bones. Flip aimed the nozzle and sprayed them, killing the flames. The car was a roaring inferno, long stalks of flame rolling into the sky. Unthinkingly, he grabbed the driver by their feet (he couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman) and dragged them inside the store. Then he called 911. Thank God the phone lines were still up.

While he waited, Flip grabbed his whiskey from the office and finished it off. Then he knelt beside the driver and tried to talk to her (it was definitely a her). She thrashed and moaned. Her face was burned and seeping, her hands were skinless, and her clothes were charred into her body. Most of her hair had been burned away, and what remained was red.

 _That's it,_ Flip thought, _she's that teacher. Johnson._

Outside, the car exploded.

East of downtown Royal Woods, the interstate was empty save for plows, state police vehicles, National Guard troop transports, and a single bus heading north. They had been on the road for several hours now, and Eric Wayne Freeman was certain they had gone no more than twenty miles. He sighed frustratedly, and the guard with the gun asked, "You got a problem, Freeman?"

"Nope," Freeman lied.

"You in a hurry?"

Freeman shook his head.

The guard leaned close. "Big Bubba ain't going nowhere, Freeman. He'll be waiting when we get there, dick in hand. All for you."

Freeman bit his tongue and didn't reply; instead, he glanced out the window. The snow was falling in thick curtains. He could barely make out the pine trees lined up along the edge of the highway.

Suddenly, the bus shuddered, the back end sliding. The driver cursed and overcorrected; they were spinning now, Freeman's heart in his throat. Everyone was screaming.

They hit a snowbank and rolled over. Freeman flew from his seat and smacked his head. After that, he knew nothing until he came groggily awake sometime later, his neck resting at a weird angle. His head throbbed and his back ached. He coughed, and cried out when he tried to sit up. _Fuck it,_ he thought, and flopped back down.

That's when he saw the gun. It was so close he could reach out and touch it. His eyes widened, and something like hope spread through him. The guard who'd been holding it lie just beyond it, facedown, blood trickling from his head.

He could get away.

He could escape.

For a minute he was so floored that he didn't move, then, all at once, he sat up and grabbed the gun, wincing at the pain in his back. He crawled over to the guard and felt for the keys on his belt. He found them, his heart skipping a beat, and ripped them off. He tried every last key on the ring, his hope turning to rage, until he found the one that unlocked his handcuffs. The third key he tried unlocked his shackles.

In the darkness of a broken, overturned bus, Eric Wayne Freeman smiled.

When the guard moaned and stirred, he smiled even more.

"Hey," Freeman said, pointing the gun. The guard lifted his head, saw him, and paled. "Surprise."

He pulled the trigger and the guard jumped.

Up front, he found the driver already did. Freeman took his gun too, and searched the wreckage for survivors. Incredibly, everyone else had escaped serious injury.

Freeman shot all of them for the hell of it, then, using one of the guns like a club, he smashed a window and crawled out into the snow. The storm was raging, the window blowing. He got to his feet and shivered.

He was free. That's all that mattered.

He started west across an open field.

Toward the town of Royal Woods.


	7. Into the Void: Part 1

_**Hope you got your things together.  
Hope you are quite prepared to die.  
Looks like we're in for nasty weather**_

 **\- Creedence Clearwater Revival**

 _ **Does anybody here remember Vera Lynn?  
Remember how she said that  
We would meet again  
Some sunny day?**_

 **\- Pink Floyd**

Clyde did not sleep that night: He alternated between sitting by the window and staring out at the storm and lying in bed thinking. At one point he turned on the radio to fill the silence, and heard about the accident at Flip's. The newscaster said the driver (who was not being named) was rushed to Royal Woods General and died in the operating room. Clyde almost envied them. Their days of rage, pain, sadness, and uncertainty were over, now they could float peacefully in the void.

Toward dawn, the wind intensified, the moaning sounds it made eerie and unsettling. The lamplights along the sidewalk swayed back and forth. At 5:30, one came down and lay across the road. Shortly thereafter, a car came down the street in the opposite direction, its headlights cutting through the driving storm. Clyde watched as it skidded across the road and sank partially into a snowbank. The tires spun and spun, kicking up snow and rocks. Finally, inevitably, the driver gave up and walked away, leaving the car blocking part of the street.

He wondered how Lori was doing. He hoped she wasn't scared. The thought of her being afraid made his stomach queasy.

At 6, a particularly strong gust rattled his window, startling him from his thoughts. Misty snow swirled in the yard. It looked rough out there.

But he had already decided he was going to the Loud house today.

He would have to sneak out and hope his parents didn't find out at least until he was far enough away that they couldn't easily track him down. He planned to tell them he wasn't feeling well and that he needed a nap. That usually worked: They left him alone until he came out on his own. Dr. Lopez called it "respecting space and boundaries," but sometimes Clyde wondered if they weren't happy to have him gone for a few hours.

Shoving that thought aside, he got up, used the bathroom, and lay down on his bed. He turned the radio on, and listened to a steady stream of news reports: Rolling blackouts, downed power lines, people going off the road. A bus transporting prisoners to a prison on the UP flipped nearby. All of those onboard were killed, one in the accident and eight others by gunshot; police were searching for Eric Wayne Freeman, who was being considered "armed and extremely dangerous." Clyde glanced out the window. As if his trek to Lori (and Lincoln) wasn't going to be nerve wracking enough, he was going to have to worry about some loony with a gun.

 _He's probably dead._

He was wearing an orange jumpsuit when the bus crashed. Dressed like that, there's no way he could have made it through the night. Clyde pictured him huddled in a cave somewhere, sitting up and frozen solid like Jack Nicholson at the end of _The Shining_ , one of the rare horror movies his dads let him watch.

He liked _The Shining_. He could relate to Jack Nicholson. He was a good guy trying to do his best by his family, but the hotel worked to drive him crazy. Clyde knew it what it was like to try and try and try, only to have outside forces working against you. In Jack's case, it was ghosts. In Clyde's, it was...well, ghosts too, for the most part, but ghosts of the mind rather than actual ghosts.

 _My mind is a haunted house,_ he thought, and couldn't help smiling at the image. What was that old saying about someone having "bats in the belfry"? It meant they were crazy. Haunted houses had bats too. They call people "mad as hatters." Do you know where that came from? In the olden days of yore, hat makers worked with a lot of mercury, and it drove a high number of them crazy. Haunted houses aren't known for having fantastic collections of hats or mercury, but that was an interesting little tidbit he'd picked up. Mad as a hatter. Bats in the belfry. Crazier than a shithouse rat. He didn't know where that last one came from. He assumed it had something to do with outhouses. Did rats live in outhouses back in the day? And were they especially violent or erratic?

The day was lightening. Soon, he would have breakfast with his dads. He wanted to leave right after that, but he worried it might arouse too much suspicion. Better to wait a while. He checked his phone and sighed. It wasn't even seven 'o'clock. Time was funny, wasn't it? The nights swept by in a streak, but the days dragged like a ninety-year-old man with a broken hip and a twisted ankle. He wondered if that was why people drank and did drugs, just to kill time, because too much time is hell for some people, and it was hell for him. He recalled an Adam Sandler movie he saw once where this guy got ahold of a magical remote control and used it to "control" his life. He could rewind time, fast-forward, pause. Clyde sometimes wished he had one of those so he could skip hours or even days. In his darker moments, he thought he would fast-forward through his entire life. I've seen enough, let me off this ride.

Deep inside, though, he hoped. He hoped for it all to be better. At some point, he imagined, it would be. The trick was _getting_ there.

Three streets over, Ronnie Anne Santiago was thinking along similar lives. _The hardest part will be getting there_.

She was sitting on her bed and dividing her gaze between the window and her phone. She had been up most of the night scrolling through photos of her and Lincoln in happier times. Looking at them made her smile, but they also made her mad. She knew vaguely that she was being unreasonable, but she didn't care. The anger felt good. She'd rather feel that than the heartache; the tightness in her chest, the shortness of breath, the rolling in her stomach. That emotion was new and strange. Anger...anger was an old friend.

Outside, the snow was coming down at an angle. She could barely make out Mrs. Acker's house ten feet away. She briefly considered the possibility that she was being stupid and acting like a heartbroken little girl. She didn't know what she would do when Lincoln came to the door (kiss him or punch him), but giving in and going to him was a sign of weakness. Let him go, a small part of her mind whispered,

Only she didn't _want_ to let him go. She wanted to hold on to him, whether as an object of love or hate, it didn't really matter. Lincoln was a part of her life, a part of _her,_ and she couldn't get rid of him any easier than she could get rid of her heart, even if it beat too fast sometimes and ached over stupid things like boys.

She was going, she decided. He didn't live very far away. She'd biked and walked the distance from her house to his a million times over the past year. It took her ten minutes, fifteen tops. So what if there was snow and wind? She'd be there in half an hour or forty-five minutes, then she'd be home. The whole thing would take an hour and a half _if_ that. She would dress warm, she would move quick, and she would follow the sidewalk (or rather the snow covering the sidewalk). She knew the route by heart. It wasn't like she was going to get lost or anything.

She tried to envision the confrontation in her mind, but couldn't. She couldn't see herself breaking down, tossing away her pride, and kissing him, but she also couldn't see herself popping him in the nose. She wanted to do both. She thought of last night: Both her mother and her brother came separately into her room to ask what was wrong with her. "You've been acting weird the last couple of days," Bobby said. "You seem upset," her mother said. She was open about her anger. When she was mad, you knew it; it made sense that she would be the same way with heartache, but it irritated her that she was. She imagined it threw off a scent like body odor, a scent that people would smell, and they would _know_ that she cried herself to sleep the night before over a boy...they would know, and they would shake their heads in pity. _How pathetic._

She seethed. _I'm not weak! I just liked him!_

That was weakness, wasn't it? Opening your heart to someone and letting them smash it into a thousand pieces? Wasn't it weakness when all you did about it was run away and cry?

She clenched her fists. She was going to hit him, so help her God. He'd open that door and she'd punch him so hard in his face she'd probably break a few of her fingers, but she didn't care. He deserved it for doing this to her, for bringing her to this point. She looked once more at the driving snow. Screw the storm. She didn't care if she got lost of froze to death of anything, just as long as she got to plow Lincoln in his stupid mouth.

The object of her hatred, Lincoln Loud, rose early that morning; though they had planned earlier in the week for Luan to sleep in her room that night (they kept to a strict schedule), she insisted on staying the night with him, not that he complained. He liked having her in his bed. When she wasn't, he had trouble falling asleep, and would find himself waking up throughout the night as he reached for her but found only emptiness. She was extra affectionate, he noticed, touching him and kissing him and cuddling him close.

"What's with you?" he asked at one point, bemused.

"Nothing," she said, "I'm just in love with you. That's all."

When she left to go back to her own room, she kissed him and stroked his cheek. He muttered sleepily and smiled. She left and he thought he would drop back off, but he couldn't, and after what seemed like a long time of teetering on the brink, he sighed, sat up, and checked his phone. He thought of texting Clyde (he didn't spend nearly enough time with his best friend as he should, and that pained him), but he decided against it. It was barely 6am, and Clyde would probably still be asleep. He also considered texting Ronnie Anne, but didn't. He knew she hated him (she'd been ignoring his texts), and...to be honest, he was kind of ashamed. He should have told her sooner. Of course, the ultimate outcome would have been the same, but in hindsight, he would have felt a lot better. As for finding someone else...Lincoln couldn't help that. He and Luan fell in love and that was that. He didn't seek this out, it came to him. He didn't ask for this. Up until August, he planned to be with Ronnie Anne. He was even considering asking her out officially, but didn't because he didn't really think she would have that. At least not now. She was a mystery. She had a beautiful heart and a wonderful soul, but she cloaked it in a shroud of anger and violence. She loved slapping, kicking, and giving Indian burns, but she was so uncomfortable with displaying any other emotion that it was sad. Once, when they were walking through the arcade, he tried to hold her hand, but she batted it away. She never mentioned it, never told him he was wrong to try and never asked him what he was thinking ("We're only friends!" he imagined her saying). She never acknowledged it.

He hoped she was doing okay. He felt like the biggest piece of shit in the world, and to anyone looking from the outside in he probably looked like one, but he really _did_ care about her. One day, he hoped, she would forgive him and they could be friends. She had a place in his heart and always would, and he wanted her to occupy it.

Swinging his feet out from under the covers, he got up and went to the bathroom, slipping in just as Lori came out. She sighed. "Hurry up, please."

"I'm just taking a leak," he assured her and shut the door. He pissed, flushed the toilet, and washed his hands. By the time he went back into the hall, Leni, Luna, and Lucy had already gotten in line. Man, that happened quick. With eleven kids, lines were a fact of life, and sometimes they sprang up in the twinkling of an eye.

He started out, and Luan suddenly flew into the hall, her hand clamped to her mouth, She cut the line, bumped into Lincoln, and slammed the door behind her. From inside, he could hear the sound of her vomiting.

"What's with her?" Lori asked.

"Yeah," Luna said, "she was pretty quick on the upchuck."

Everyone laughed, except for Luan. A muffled "Shut up!" demonstrated her displeasure with the pun.

"You okay?" Lincoln asked, pressing his face against the door.

"I'm fine," she called back. "I've been up all night with the runs. I think it was dad's beans and franks."

Lori nodded. "Yeah, that'll do that."

"Why was she up running all night?" Leni wondered, putting a thoughtful finger to her chin.

A few minutes later, the toilet flushed and Luan stepped into the hall, her eyes puffy and her face red. Lola, Lana, Lynn, and Lisa had all joined the line while she was throwing up. Their faces were concerned.

"At least the diarrhea's all done," she said and smiled weakly. "I guess it's _run_ its course." She looked at Luna. " _That's_ how you make a pun."

"My pun was pretty bitchin," Luna said, "you gotta admit."

"Yeah, yeah," Luan grinned.

While the others waited to use the bathroom, Luan went back into her room and sat down. Her stomach still rolled and flipped, but it wasn't as bad as it had been. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and leaned forward. Suddenly, Lincoln was beside her, his warm hand on the back of her neck; a shiver went down her spine.

"Are you okay?" he asked worriedly.

"I'm fine," she said, and looked at him. Her heart filled with love and she certain that she would cry. Damn hormones. "My tummy's just a little upset." She gave an exaggerated frown.

"Awww," Lincoln said, and wrapped his arm around her. "Poor baby."

"I'll survive, though," she said, "the show must always go on."

"That's my girl," Lincoln said, and kissed on the forehead.

 _That's my girl,_ Eric Wayne Freeman thought as he petted the revolver he'd taken from the guard the night before. Presently, Freeman was sitting in the kitchen of a farmhouse at the end of a dirt road north of Royal Woods, a steaming cup of coffee before him. The gun sat in his lap.

After escaping from the bus, he trudged overland through the snow for what seemed like an eternity, the snow so deep in places that it reached his knees. The blowing wind chilled him, and by the time he had made it into the forest at the end of the field, he was numb and shivering. _Wouldn't it be some shit if I froze to death?_ He thought darkly at one point, and laughed until tears rolled down his cheeks. He could imagine the cops standing over his frozen body in the light of day, the bus and the highway still in sight. " _He_ didn't make it very far."

The forest stretched for about a mile before giving way to hills and pastureland. He spotted the farmhouse through the tempest; a single porch light glowing in the snow-shrouded night. It could have been a house or a church or even a prison for all he knew, but he went to it, because he was starting to get tired, and he knew enough to know that when you get tired in the cold, you're on your way out.

Thankfully the only people home were an elderly man and his wife: Freeman tied them up and left them on the kitchen floor while he ransacked the place. He stole five hundred dollars in cash, some jewelry, and some winter clothes from the closet: They were a size too small, but they fit well enough. In the bathroom, he shaved and cut his hair as short as he could. With a knit cap on his head, even he barely recognized himself.

In the kitchen, made himself something to eat, and ate while mocking the terrified couple. "Hey, gramps, when's the last time you stuck it to your woman? Fifty years? I think it's time a _real_ man takes a shot at it. Beat the dust off that thing." He remembered that upstairs he had seen framed black-and-white photos of a smiling young man in an army uniform from WWII or something. "How about I beat the dust off your thing too, pops?" Nothing would humiliate a manly-man war veteran than being raped up his ass. The thought made Freeman laugh, but he had no intention of raping either one of them. Instead, he took a butcher knife from the drying rack by the sink and stabbed them both to death, laughing as their blood splattered his face.

Presently, he finished off his coffee and got up. The phone on the kitchen wall rang, and he winced. Second time the past fifteen minutes. Someone _reaaaally_ wanted to talk to grandma and grandpa, probably a worried kid or grandkid. He had to go, because sooner or later someone would come looking for them, even in the snow.

Outside, weak morning light showed a world lumpy with snow. More drove from the sky, pelting him in the face and eyes: The wind ripped the breath from his lungs, and he gulped like a fish out of water.

A garage sat behind the house, its sides and front heaped with snow. He peered through a dusty window, and saw the Jeep Grand Cheokee the old man told him about before he passed away. The snow was too high to simply pull the doors open, so he looked around for something to shovel it with, saw nothing, and, sighing, used his bare hands. Within moments they were red, raw, and aching, and just as he was finishing up, a strong wind gust knocked him over.

Inside, he checked the tires (there were chains on them...just like grandpa said) and then threw some things he thought he could use into the cargo hatch: A gas can, a snow shovel, some tarp, a toolbox. He did a quick once over, and found an old lever action Winchester rife sitting on a high shelf next to a box of rounds. He checked it, loaded it up, and went outside to test her out: He aimed at side window and fired: The glass shattered.

Alright. He threw that into the passenger seat and climbed in behind the wheel. He started the engine and let it idle for a minute, listening to a news broadcast on the radio. He suffered through five minutes of weather bulletins until they started talking about him.

"Convicted serial killer Eric Wayne Freeman escaped from a police transport vehicle late last night, killing several people in the process. The vehicle slid off the road and rolled over near the town of Royal Woods. Freeman managed to escape in the chaos and killed a guard and several inmates execution style. Police are currently searching the area, but their efforts are being hampered by Winter Storm Carrie, which continues to drop snow and produce high winds across the region."

Freeman nodded. So they were already looking for him. He couldn't say he was surprised, just disappointed. He'd have to find a place to hole up until the storm passed and he could drive out.

He threw the Jeep into drive, and rolled out of the garage, the tires sinking in the snow and getting instantly stuck. Damn it. He floored the gas, and they spun impotently. Gritting his teeth, he pressed harder, and the Jeep came free, rocketing forward and jumping over a mound of snow. He was jostled, his head hitting the roof. After a few feet, he stepped on the brake and looked south. The farm sat on the top of a hill. Unbroken snow covered everything. There had to be a driveway to the road, but he couldn't see it.

Throwing caution to the wind, he turned and started down, the Jeep shaking and jumping. After five hundred feet, he slammed into something, and the front end jerked violently. Metal shrieked. White smoke shot up from the crumpled hood. God _damn_ it.

Seething, he threw open the door and stepped out, his feet and legs sinking into the snow. He went around the front and looked the vehicle over. It was caught on something. A fence post, probably. That meant he'd have to walk.

Great. Just fucking great. He reached in, grabbed the rifle (and the box of rounds), and started down the hill, wind driven snow lashing him. At the end of the hill, he randomly took a left and started walking. He had to lift his feet clear of the snow, which had to be close to two feet. Today was going to be a _baaad_ day, he could just tell.


	8. Into the Void: Part 2

_**Snow fills the fields we used to know  
And the little park where we would go  
Sleeps far below in the snow**_

 _ **-**_ **Harry Nilsson**

 _ **Sleigh bells ring, are you listenin'  
In the lane, snow is glistening  
A beautiful sight, we're happy tonight  
Walking in a winter wonderland**_

 **\- Darlene Love**

Clyde dressed in his parka, heavy pants, and snowshoes. He stood by the door listening for a long time, but didn't hear anything. When he suggested taking a nap after lunch, his fathers pleasantly surprised him by saying they, too, were tired.

Convinced that they were at least in their room and not up and about, Clyde tucked his phone into his jacket's inside pocket, crossed to the window, and lifted the sash: A blast of cold wind washed over him, and he shuddered. For a moment he considered getting undressed and forgetting the whole thing, but the pressing need in his stomach pushed him on. Swinging one leg out, he slipped through and dropped into a snowbank. He got up, brushed himself off, and closed the window.

The snow was up to his knees, and, looking around, it looked to deeper elsewhere, if anything. Blinding sheets fell from the sky, reducing visibility drastically. He could see only as far as the house after the next one over, and even that was hazy and indistinct.

He could feel his resolve starting to crumble, so he pushed himself toward the street. It was too much work lifting his feet, so he just barreled through. When he reached the sidewalk (at least he _thought_ it was the sidewalk), he turned north and started toward Lincoln's house. Wind battered him, nearly knocking him over. The sound of it whipping and whistling up the street made him nervous. It sounded like the voice of a hungry phantom.

At the end of his street, he turned right and crossed to Park Place. Many of the houses he passed were buried in the snow, looking like they had been dropped haphazardly into the mess by an oversized child. He saw a few lighted windows, but many of them were dark and frosted: The radio said most of the town was without power, and that the rest would be without probably by dark. Overnight, everything was expected to ice over, which would be when things started coming down.

He turned left onto Royal Drive, and walked into a fence. He walked a little farther up then turned again. Was it just him, or was the storm getting worse? The snow seemed to be coming faster, the curtain around him growing thicker and whiter. He could barely see five feet in front of him. The wind cracked against his face like the kiss of whip. He ducked his head and pressed forward: His foot kicked something, and he went down, his body sinking into the snow. He tried to push himself up by his hands, but they kept sinking, sinking. How deep is it?

Finally, he reached solid ground, and pushed himself up just as, on the other side of the street, a power pole started to fall with a loud wooden groan. The line was ripped from its mooring, and an electric flash filled the day. Screaming, Clyde threw his arms up; the pole fell in the opposite direction, crashing into the center of a house. The line dangled over the street, sparks showering onto the ground. Panting, his heart racing, Clyde got back underway, moving faster than he had before, but, sadly, was not much faster at all. Every step took great effort, and every so often, his legs buckled and nearly gave out. He kept his head down but glanced up often, his eyes squinted. Before long, he could see nothing beyond the tip of his nose. The storm pressed against him on every side cocooning him.

His anxiety started to rise: Even though he knew it was irrational, he couldn't help but think that the entire world had ceased to exist, that there was nothing but a cold white void, and that he had somehow managed to survive and was damned to wander it for all eternity. His heart was crashing. He closed his eyes and tried to conjure up a sweet, saving vision of Lori Loud's face, but he walked into something, bounced off, and fell into the snow.

 _Not again!_

Sighing, he fought his way back to his feet and tried to ascertain what he had walked into. It was a car buried up to its windows. It was white, like the snow around it. He couldn't tell if it was parked at the curb or abandoned in the middle of the street. Hell, he could have been in someone's backyard three blocks out of his way for all he knew: In the heart of the void, there is no direction.

He was beginning to regret coming out here. He should have stayed home and contented himself with looking at her picture instead of trying to reach her. What was he thinking? 

_Crazy._ That's what he was thinking. He was thinking crazy and obsessively and now he was going to wander in circles until he laid down and froze to death because of it.

Though he had wished for the sweet, blissful release of death many times over the course of his life, Clyde suddenly realized that he didn't want to die.

Unbeknownst to him, Ronnie Ann Santiago was having a very similar thought just one street over. She was bent against the rushing wind, her gloved hands shoved deeply into the pockets of her dull pink parka. She was wearing improvised snowshoes, but they did little more than make her steps even clunkier than they would have been otherwise.

 _You're an idiot,_ she told herself as she pushed against the raging storm, _a complete fucking moron and now you're going to die. Happy with yourself? You're going to die all because you had to come out here over some boy._

That thought made her angry. Her mother would go to pieces, and Bobby would probably never get over it...all because she couldn't handle Lincoln wanting someone else. She couldn't even blame him for his, it was her, all her. If she wasn't so bullheaded she'd be home and warm and safe right now, but instead was she shambling through the biggest blizzard in almost forty years and heading nowhere but into the arms of Death himself. Was Lincoln's house even this way?

 _You said you could make it. You said you knew the area._

Yeah, well, she did, but the area was gone. All of the familiar sights and landmarks and everything else had been wiped away, buried, or hidden behind a dense falling blanket of white death. She looked around, and saw nothing but the same unbroken shade of white. White, white, white, just like Lincoln's hair.

She shocked a laugh from herself. What a time to be thinking about Lincoln's hair! Why don't you take a load off, lay down, and think about his smile next? Hell, take a nap too. Wake when December ends.

She laughed again, and the scarf fell away from her face. She stopped, put in back in place, and trudged on. God, it was cold. Had she ever been this cold in her life? She didn't think so. It was a deep, marrow chilling freeze that she imagined only existed on some level of hell. The wind raked her like icy nails, and the pelting snow hit her face like shards of broken glass.

 _Damn you, Lincoln Loud, look what you've done to me!_

She tripped and went down to her knees, the snow rising up around her; her breath left her in a rush. She got back to her feet.

 _No, damn_ you _Roberta. You stupid bitch._

Stupid, desperate, needy, emotional bitch. She would have cried, but she was afraid the tears would freeze in her eyes and blind her. She brushed the snow off of her, but it was too late: Her socks were wet, her pants and underwear were wet, and her undershirt was wet. She trembled as she walked, her teeth chattering together. She unknowingly veered off the road and walked right into a metal street lamp: Stars burst across her vision, and she fell back, blood gushing down her nose.

"Son of a _bitch!_ " she screamed, shaking with cold _and_ rage. She jumped to her feet, stripped one of her gloves off, and pressed her hand against her nose. Her fingertips came away red.

Perfect. Just perfect.

She looked up the street. Nothing. Literally. She considered turning back, but she honestly didn't think she would make it home.

She _had_ to get to Lincoln's. He broke her heart, the least he could do was save her life.

A little over a mile away, Lincoln Loud was sitting in the kitchen and watching the storm rage; the snowy wind roared with an apocalyptic din that scared him. He could barely see to the stockade fence between his backyard and the next; at some point during the night, a tree fell onto it, cleaving through it like a knife through hot butter. The barren top of the tree was fifteen _maybe_ twenty feet from the back porch, but it was lost in the void.

He reached for the can of soda on the table before him just as the lights flickered, dimmed, came back bright, then went out with a whir. "There goes the power!" Lori called from the living room.

"I'm blind!" Leni chimed in.

"No you aren't," Luna said.

"Oh. Okay. Never mind!"

Lincoln stayed where he was for a moment, then got up. The night before, he and Lynn helped Lisa carry her homemade generator down into the basement and hook it to the grid. It was supposed to kick on automatically sixty seconds after the power cut out. It had been slightly more than sixty seconds.

Just as he reached the basement door, Lisa strode into the kitchen holding a flashlight. "Move," she said, irritation evident in her voice. He opened the door and stepped aside. Lori, Leni, Luna, and mom and dad appeared in the archway to the living room.

"It's not working?" Lori asked worriedly.

"I don't think so," Lincoln said.

From below, a metallic crash rang out and Lisa cursed. A split second later, the power came back on, much dimmer and murkier than before.

Lisa ascended the stairs and stopped in the doorway. "The good news is: We have power. The bad news: Only five of the seven micro-illuminous fiber optic cables are working at full capacity, which means we need to conserve as much energy as possible if we don't want it to blow. That means no charging laptops or phones, no DVDs...in fact, we should unplug all appliances not currently in use, and not turn on too many lights. The generator will have a hard enough time keeping the heat on."

Everyone spread out and began unplugging everything: The TV, the microwave, the coffee maker, radios, alarm clocks. Lincoln covered the kitchen, then went up the backstairs and made sure everything was unplugged in his room. Next, he poked his head into Luan's room. She was curled up under the covers and snoring. She hadn't been feeling well the entire day, and Lincoln was beginning to worry.

Instead of waking her, he swept her room, unplugging her clock, her phone (95 percent...sorry, sis), Luna's amps, and both girls' laptops.

"What are you doing?" she asked sleepily.

"The power went out and Lisa's generator isn't working right, so we have to unplug everything."

"Great," she said, and sat up. "What time is it?"

Lincoln checked his phone. "12:30. How are you feeling?"

"Better," she said. For a moment she sat there dazed, her eyes puffy, and Lincoln smiled at how cute she was.

"You should go back to sleep."

"No," she said, "I'm fine." She got up and stretched.

Lincoln opened his mouth to ask if she was _really_ feeling better when dad called up the stairs: "Lincoln!"

Lincoln poked his head into the hall. "Yeah?"

"Has Clyde texted you today?"

"No. Why?"

"He dads say he's not home and they're worried sick."

Lincoln's heart dropped. He went to the top of the stairs. "He's not home?"

"Nope. And there were footprints leading away from his window. They think he's coming here because he's been wanting to see you."

Oh, no. Clyde wasn't stupid enough to try and walk here in a blizzard, though...was he?

Something touched his shoulder, and he jumped: It was just Luan, her eyes worried. "What's wrong?"

Lincoln's mind spun. "Clyde. He snuck out and his dads think he's coming here."

 _Because he's been wanting to see you._

A twinge of guilt clinched Lincoln's stomach. He hadn't been spending much time with Clyde lately. He knew that. And he knew, vaguely, that Clyde wasn't entirely happy about it, which kind of bothered him. Clyde was his best friend...the brother he never had. It's just that he had so much else going on.

Like Luan.

"Oh, no," Luan said. "There's no way he'd make it. Have you looked outside recently?"

Lincoln nodded numbly.

"I have to find him."

He pulled away from Luan and went into his room. For a moment his sister stood where she was, her sleep-addled brain not comprehending what he meant. Then it struck her.

"You can't go out there!"

She went to his room and stood in the doorway; he was hurriedly pulling on thick black snow pant.

"I don't have any choice," he said. "He's my best friend and he's out there. He may even be hurt."

The thought of his friend injured in the snow brought tears to his eyes. The realization that it was his fault made his stomach hurt.

Luan couldn't believe what she was hearing. "You won't be helping him if you get lost too. Please, Lincoln, no."

Lincoln pulled on his boots. "I have to."

He threw on a sweatshirt.

"Fine," Luan said, "but I'm coming with you."

"No."

"Yes," she said forcefully. "I'm not letting you go out there by yourself."

Before Lincoln could argue further, she disappeared.

He sighed and briefly considered calling off the search. He knew how dangerous it was in the storm; he could very well get lost and freeze to death. That thought didn't bother him when it came to his own life. His best friend was worth it. But the thought of Luan being hurt was unacceptable.

But Clyde was lost, and if the shoe was on the other foot, he would do the same for Lincoln in a heartbeat.

Luan returned wearing a purple wool coat with a white fringe that reached her knees, a knit cap, and high black boots. She was winding a bright red scarf around her neck. As he watched her, Lincoln's heart filled with love.

And terror.

"Please stay here," he said.

"No," she replied curtly.

Lincoln sighed. "Fine."

He looked out the window. The world was white and cold.

 _Clyde, you dumbass...I'm sorry._

Clyde stumbled, tried to save himself from another fall, and failed, pitching forward face first into the snow. It enveloped him, getting into his boots, his jacket, and even his pants. For a moment he thought he didn't have the energy to stand; he would just lay here and die. The cold wasn't that bad, really; by this point, he was largely numb to it.

Something, however, pushed him to get back to his feet.

In the past fifteen minutes, the storm had intensified exponentially: The world was a swarming tempest of white, the wind lashing him harder, nonstop. The lenses of his glasses had iced over, and he removed them and stuck them into his jacket.

He had to get to Lincoln's, and _fast_. He stared forward, but must have veered off of the street, because he ran into something, and realized that it was the side of a house. Damn it. Where was the sidewalk? He thought it was right, but maybe it was left. He started right and passed a mailbox sticking out of the snow. It was crusted with ice and slanted.

The wind howled, and he shivered. He started right again, but realized his error. Before he could turn, however, he saw something coming out of the snow. He squinted against the battering flakes, and realized it was a person: Without his glasses, all he could see was a pale pink blur.

Reaching into his pocket, he put his glasses on and watched as the person, a girl by the looks of it, fell to their knees and sank into the snow. A moment later, an arm popped up and searched for purchase; it landed on the snow and sank again.

Clyde almost turned and left them, but at the last moment, he started toward them. "Are you okay?" he asked, the wind ripping the words from his mouth and blowing them into the ether. He reached the person and bent. They were facedown and not moving. He reached out and shook them.

Nothing.

His heart sputtered.

Again, he thought of leaving. They were a goner and he still had a fighting chance. The only thing that stopped him was the realization that he already had enough keeping him awake at night...he didn't need something else.

He stripped off his gloves, shoved them into his pockets, and grabbed the person by the back of their jacket. Grunting, straining, he brought them to their feet, his eyes wideneing when he saw a familiar face.

"Ronnie Anne?"

The girl's eyes were closed and her mouth was slighted parted. Her face was crusted with ice and snow; snot was frozen to the rim of her nostrils. He reached out and touched the side of her face: It was cold and hard, like marble. Her eyelids fluttered and her lips moved.

He hooked his arm under her shoulder. "Can you walk?" he asked.

She opened her eyes and looked at him; they were vacant and faraway.

"Walk."

He started forward, and she shuffled her feet. She was heavy. Clyde's knees gave out and he went partially down.

They had to get out of the snow fast. He looked around. There were houses out there, but he couldn't see them.

"Right," he said, and started in that direction. The snow got deeper. It was up to his hips now. Ronnie Anne was totally limp. He almost dropped her.

Ahead, something loomed out of the snow, and Clyde's heart jumped. As he got closer, he saw that it was only a toolshed, and his spirits sank. A gust of wind washed over him, and he nearly dropped Ronnie Anne again.

Beggers can't be choosers, they say.

He dragged her over to the shed and checked the door for a lock. There was none. Thank God.

He let Ronnie Anne drop into the snow (sorry) and, working quickly, cleared enough that he could slip the door open just wide enough to admit a small body. He helped Ronnie Anne up, shoved her through the crack (she fell to the floor and hit her head on a pink plastic riding toy – sorry), then scooched in behind her, closing the door against the snow. Within minutes, it was blocked again.

Less than a mile away, Luan Loud strapped tennis rackets to her brother's feet, and then he did the same for her. At his window, he lifted the sash, and cold wind rushed in.

"The drop isn't that far," he said, glancing back over his shoulder. "And there's a snowbank."

He considered slipping out the back, but the risk of being seen by one of his parents or his siblings was too high.

"Are you ready?"

Luan nodded uncertainly. No, she wasn't, but there was no way in hell she was going to let the man she loved go out into a blizzard alone.

"Good," he said. He hooked one leg over the sill and then the other. For a moment he was perched, then he jumped. Luan went to the window and looked down just as he stood. "Come on!" he called, his voice muffled by the wind.

Luan took a deep breath and wondered if the fall would hurt the baby. The snowbank was ten feet high at least, totally covering the dining room window. The drop into it could be more than five feet. Was that enough to do damage?

"Come on!"

She climbed out the way Lincoln had, and leapt, falling into the bank and sinking. Lincoln grabbed her under her arms and pulled her out. "Are you okay?" he asked, shouting to be heard over the wind.

"Yeah!" she replied.

He grabbed her by the hand and led her around the front of the house. The snow was so deep in places that it reached Luan's waist.

"Lincoln, this is crazy!"

"I told you to stay!"

She knew. And a part of her already wished she had.


	9. Trapped

The air was stale and redolent of wood shavings and motor oil. It was dusky, and Clyde could barely see, even with his glasses on. Shelves lined both side walls. He dragged a metal toolbox into place and stood on it to search them: He found a tarp, an old flashlight whose beam was dim and sickly, and a first aid kit empty save for a bottle of Tylenol that expired in 2013 and some cotton balls. Good enough, he guessed.

Ronnie Anne was lying supine on the dirt floor, her breathing ragged. He went to her and knelt down, feeling for the pulse in her neck the way he had learned in the first aid class he took the summer before last. It was strong but a little fast. Her flesh was still cold to the touch. He felt along her body and her legs. There were no obvious breaks, lumps, or nasty sprains. She was soaked, though, and even though he didn't really want to, he started undressing her, taking her boots first, then her saturated socks. He pulled her snow pants down slightly, and sighed with relief when he saw jeans underneath them. He took those, then her jacket. Her sweat shirt was damp along the front and around the hem, but he decided to leave it on.

He grabbed the tarp, draped it over her (making sure to tuck one of the ends under her body to keep it in place), then hurriedly stripped off his own wet clothes. His jeans and long-sleeved shirt were dry, but flimsy: The deep, frigid chill pervading the shack total, and he shivered as he slipped under the tarp. He worked to tuck in all the edges, trapping as much body heat inside as he could. When he was done, he laid back and listened to the roar of the storm, and to the soft sound of Ronnie Anne's breathing. The temperature started to rise almost immediately, but the wet heat was cloying, and every so often he had to stick his head out and breathe. Along with his many phobias and anxieties, he was claustrophobic as well. Go figure.

The atmosphere seemed to affect Ronnie Anne too, because shortly she stirred and let out a long, low moan.

"Take it easy," Clyde said. "You're okay?"

"Where am I? Am I dead?"

"No, you're in someone's shed."

"Why?" she asked, confused.

"Because it was either come in here and live or stay out there and die."

"Oh," said, and was silent for a long time, her breathing shallow and rhythmic. Clyde didn't know if he should let her go back to sleep or not. It was warm under the tarp, but she was in pretty bad shape the last time he checked her.

Reaching out, he found her arm and moved her sleeve up to check her skin, but she jerked. "What are you doing?" she asked sleepily.

"Making sure your skin isn't cold as ice anymore. How do you feel?"

"Tired," she said, "and sore."

"Can you flex your fingers and toes?"

A moment later: "Yes."

Good, that meant she probably didn't have frostbite. He flexed his own digits to reassure himself that he didn't have it either. He didn't. Whew.

The wind rose, and the shed trembled. Clyde poked his head out and looked around. There was no visible damage, but he wasn't sure the structure would survive much longer. He wished he'd brought his phone. He left it home so it wouldn't get wet. Ha. Genius.

"Ronnie," he said, rolling onto his side, hope rising in him. "Do you have your phone?"

"Yes," she said. "It's in my jacket pocket."

Bingo!

Clyde slipped out from under the tarp and knelt beside Ronnie Anne's jacket. He fished in the left pocket, then the right. He didn't feel anything. He picked it up and checked the inside pockets, his heart beginning to race. Still nothing. Damn it.

"It's not here," he said.

Ronnie Anne didn't reply for a moment; Clyde thought she fell back asleep. "I guess I dropped it."

 _Shit._

Fighting down a surge of panic, he swept his hands across the phone, hoping it had simply fallen out when he took her jacket off. He didn't find it. He did, however, find a small kerosene heater shoved under a workbench. He crawled to it and pulled it out: It was heavy, and he could feel the fuel sloshing inside. Looking it over, it appeared functional. He did not light it, however. He wanted to save it in case they became desperate for heat.

Knowing it was there put him at ease, though.

Slipping back under the tarp, he said, "We're in good shape. I found a kerosene heater and it looks okay. We can turn it on if we need it."

"Cool," she muttered.

For a long time, neither of them spoke, then finally, she asked, "What happened out there? I can't remember."

"You collapsed," Clyde said. "I saw you and helped you in here."

"What were you doing out there?"

"I-" Clyde stopped, loath to admit it. "I was going to Lincoln's."

Ronnie Anne chuckled humorlessly. "So was I. Were you going to punch him in the face too?"

Clyde's eyebrow arched. "No. I was going to see why he's been so distant lately. I..." he trailed off and let the sentence hang unfinished in the air.

"What?"

"I miss him," Clyde said honestly. "He's the only friend I've ever had. He's the only person I never thought would hurt me or throw me away."

Ronnie Anne didn't reply.

"Why were _you_ going there?"

"To punch him in the face."

"But why?"

"Because he dumped me."

Clyde blinked. "I, uh, I didn't know you two were together."

"Not officially, but...I don't know, it's complicated."

"Ah," Clyde said, and nodded. Relationships could be that way he'd heard. He didn't know firsthand.

When Clyde spoke again, he said, "I feel kind of like he dumped me too."

"Yeah? Join the club, dork."

Three and a half miles south, Eric Wayne Freeman loaded his rifle and a bag of provisions into the cargo bay of a black Ford panel van and slammed the back doors. He went through the door connecting the garage to the house and walked into the kitchen. A man and a woman were lying face down on the linoleum, their hands bound behind their backs. Blood pooled next to them. A broken knife was nearby, the blade snapped from the handle. He would have shot them (the noise of the storm would have covered the reports), but he was low on ammo. He had a full box of rounds for the rifle, but only three shots left for the revolver (he left the other one in the snow by the road; let them chew on _that_ come Spring). He regretted shooting everyone on the bus. He should have cut their throats with a jagged piece of glass or strangled them.

He went through the house one final time, taking some jewelry and fifty bucks in cash from the couple's room. On his way out the door, he grabbed another knife from the drying rack and stuck it into his belt. Back in the garage, he loaded a toolbox and a first aid kit into the passenger seat, slid behind the wheel, and started the engine. The radio came to life, some cheesy eighties song blasting from the speakers. He grimaced and turned it down.

For a long moment he sat in the garage and peering into the thick falling snow. He dreaded a repeat of the Jeep, but if what they were saying on the news was true, National Guard troops and state police officers were conducting a door-to-door search in Royal Woods; it was only a matter of time before they found him. Driving out wasn't an A1 option on account of the travel ban, but it was either sit around and wait or get out there and _try_.

Sucking a deep breath, he pressed on the gas pedal, and the van crept out of the garage and into the driveway. The front tires sank and spun, and he gritted his teeth. They came loose, and he pulled out onto the street (or what he imagined was the street), the vehicle shaking and shuddering. He spun the wheel left, and the van blasted through mounted snow, its headlights reflecting off the driving downpour.

When the van was pointing in the direction he wanted, he pressed the gas and crawled forward. The engine whined, the tires slid. The wheel pulled to the left, and he jerked it back. "Come on, you motherfucker," he growled, and hit the wheel. "Come on!"

"Come on," Lincoln said, his head bent against the storm. Luan was trailing behind, and almost lost her footing. Why didn't she stay? Why did she have to come and put added stress on his mind?

"I'm trying!" she yelled, turning her head away from the pounding snowfall. They had gone roughly half a mile south along Franklin Avenue. Lincoln, like Clyde, knew the area well, and was certain that he could navigate well even in low visibility. And like Clyde, he soon came to realize just how wrong he was. He could barely see two feet in front of his face, and what he did see didn't make sense: Houses buried nearly to their roofs, slanted power poles and street lamps, dangling power lines. The wind scoured tundra might as well have been on a remote section of Pluto for all he recognized it.

Soon, they were at the intersection of Franklin and Main. Lincoln only knew that because the steeple of the First Methodist Church towered into the sky. A dark traffic light swung crazily back and forth. Shops, their windows boarded against the storm, lined the street.

"Lincoln!"

Lincoln looked back. Luan was holding onto her cap with her hand. "We have to go back! There's no way we'll be able to find him like this!"

"I have to try!" Lincoln shouted back. "He's my friend!"

"I know! But we'll wind up dead! I have to think about the baby!"

"What?" Lincoln asked, not sure he'd heard her right.

"I have to think about the baby," she repeated.

It took a moment for her words to sink in, but when they did, Lincoln jolted. _"Baby?"_

She nodded. "I think I'm pregnant!"

A gust of wind nearly pushed him over. Luan? _Pregnant?_ It made sense the way she'd been sick lately. He remembered the morning sickness his mother had with Lilly, and the enormous reality of what she was proposing came over him. He was going to be a father.

That scared the shit out of him.

Head spinning, a mixture of happiness and horror rising into the back of his throat, he put his hand to his head and stumbled as another crash of wind raked him. Luan grinned sheepishly, and he took her into his arms. He opened his mouth to speak, but didn't know what to say. Finally, he said, "You should have stayed home."

"I know," she said. "You should have too."

Just then, a loud, timber-splitting thunderclap cut through the storm. They turned just as the church steeple began to topple to the side. Lincoln's arm tightened around Luan's waist as it crashed down in a shower of wood, plaster, and steel beams. Debris pelted the street and rained down on the buildings flanking the right hand side of the street, the bulk of it landing on the road, the sidewalk, and a parked car.

"Let's go," Lincoln said.

 _Sorry, Clyde._

-2-

"I just feel stupid, you know?"

They had been in the shed for hours...two or twenty, Clyde couldn't tell. The light against the frosted window pane was getting dimmer, but it was pretty dim to begin with. It could be two in the afternoon or six. Who knew? Who cared anymore?

"Yeah," he sighed. They were no longer under the tarp: They lay with it pulled up to their chins. Clyde found another one and laid it on the ground beneath them. To be honest, he didn't _really_ understand how she felt.

"I guess he just needed someone...different."

Clyde opened his mouth to speak, but closed it again. He knew Ronnie Anne well enough to know that she would probably sock him in the face if he said what was on his mind.

"I mean...do you think I'm a bitch?"

Clyde sighed. "No," he finally admitted, "I think you just shut people out because you're afraid of being hurt. You hide your emotions behind a wall of hardness. I kind of do the same thing but different. My dads..." here he paused, not wanting to go on. Thinking about it made his mind ache.

"Yeah?" she urged.

"My dads adopted me when I was eight. I was in an orphanage since I was born. My mother dropped me off and drove away. I guess people get over that, but...I think...if you can't trust the woman who gave birth to you...who _can_ you trust?"

Ronnie Anne was silent beside him. "That's rough," she said finally, "  
I'm sorry."

"Don't be. My dads love me. I know that. But I get scared sometimes. Scared they're going to send me back and nuns are going to beat me again. Scared that I won't be good enough to please them. I'm so messed up and I'm afraid I'm too much of a burden."

"You're a dork," Ronnie Anne said in the gathering gloom, "but you're not messed up. The way you are makes perfect sense."

"Yeah," he muttered.

"You're kind of right, too. Okay? I don't want to let anyone in because shit like this happens. You open up your heart and someone sticks you in it. You know that, right? You feel that way?"

Clyde shrugged. "Kind of. I mean...my dads treat me good, but there'll always be a hint of doubt, you know? Because they aren't my real parents, and I don't know if you can unconditionally love what isn't yours. Look at all the people getting married and getting divorced. They loved each other but something happened and they stopped. Something might happen with my dads and they'll stop loving _me_."

His lips began to quiver, but he beat back the tears.

"I don't think that'll happen," Ronnie Anne said. She hated being mushy-gushy, but the pain was clear in his voice; she had to say _something_. "They _chose_ you, Clyde. A lot of birth parents don't really do that. It just happens. But with your dads...they acutally chose you out of all the other kids, and they haven't given up on you yet."

"I guess," Clyde said.

"I just...it's not easy for me to be mush-gushy and shit, and I really liked Lincoln. I can't say I blame him, but I'm still mad."

"At yourself, mostly," Clyde blurted, and wished he hadn't.

Instead of snapping at him or punching him, Ronnie Anne only sighed. "Yeah. Mainly at myself, for acting like this. I should have let it go, but I didn't. I'm weak."

"So am I," Clyde said. "I need someone else to tell me I'm worth something, because I can't believe it myself. I know I shouldn't be like that, but it's hard when you're as alone in the world as I am. I don't even know who I am."

"You're a dork," Ronnie Anne said, "but you're an alright dork."

Clyde glanced at her. "Thanks. And you're a tough hardass. But in a good way."

She giggled, and suddenly they were kissing, her tongue slipping into his mouth. His eyes widened and for a moment he didn't know what to do, then he kissed her back, his hand falling gently to the side of her head.

"What's that?" Luan asked. Lincoln looked up, snow pelting him in the face. Ahead, a black shape loomed out of the tempest. He stopped and squinted.

"I don't know!" he shouted over his shoulder. They approached, and suddenly a man came out of the snow. He was dressed in a heavy jacket and a knit cap. Lincoln realized then that it was a van, and it was stuck.

Grunting, the man tried to push the vehicle free, but it wouldn't budge. Shaking his head, he turned, saw Lincoln and Luan, and jerked.

"Hey, can you help me?" he called. "My van's stuck!"

Lincoln came to the man's side and helped his in another vain attempt to push the van out. "Harder!" the man strained.

Luan was pushing now too, and with the three of them working, the tires began to roll. Without word, the man rushed to the cab, climbed in, and gunned the engine. The van shot forward, and Lincoln and Luan both fell into the snow.

"You okay?" Lincoln asked as he got to his feet.

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"Thanks for the help," the man said. Lincoln turned...

...and stared down the barrel of a gun.

"Now get in."


	10. Height of the Storm

The Royal Woods police station was abuzz with activity: State police officers and uniformed National Guardsmen made phone calls, studied maps, stacked and unstacked pallets of bottled water and MREs (Meals Ready to Eat...processed slop Uncle Sam deemed fit for his finest), and generally got in Sheriff David Katz's way. Katz's resented their presence, but even he had to admit: Shit was getting out of hand. Since the storm started the previous afternoon, five people had died in Royal Woods, not counting the Johnson woman, who went early enough that they were able to transport her out: Mr. Williamson, 69 last Spring, had a heart attack while shoveling his driveway and keeled over; Mr. Frederick, thirty-five and healthy, slammed his car into a support column of the Mercer Bridge and went over the side; Mrs. Stevens, wife to the former Mayor, suffered a dementia episode and wandered out into the storm; and Mr. and Mrs. Jacobs had been butchered in their kitchen by the proverbial persons unknown, though Katz knew damn well who it was: That Freeman asshole.

In addition to the dead and the escaped son of a bitch finishing what the storm started, roofs had been collapsing all day, power lines were down, abandoned cars blocked at least four streets, the Methodist church steeple came down, and trees had fallen on three houses. The refugee center at the school was filling up fast, and so was his jail: All of the stiffs aside from Mrs. Johnson were stacked in two adjoining cells, zipped tight into black body bags. Though there was no way they were beginning to decompose already, Katz imagined he could smell them in there, ripe and sickly sweet.

What else was there? Oh, right, the McBride boy and the Santiago girl were missing and their parents were going out of their minds. As far as he could tell, they had no reason to be together, so it was probably a case of two dumb kids wanting to explore and getting lost. Though he didn't tell the parents, they probably wouldn't find them until the snow started melting.

Katz was pouring himself a cup of coffee in the breakroom when Billy Sidwell, his deputy, poked his head in. "Got another couple missing kids, Sheriff."

Katz's shoulders sagged. Goddamn it. "Who?"

Sidwell glanced at a scrap of paper in his hands. "A Lincoln and Luan Loud. They're friends of the McBride boy and their parents think they went looking for him."

"Great," Katz said, "just what my day needed." He took a swig of coffee.

"Should we send someone out?"

"Probably you and me," Katz said. "Everyone else is busy."

Eight of his deputies were sweeping the town for Freeman and another two were patrolling for damage, three were already looking for McBride and Santiago, the state boys only cared about Freeman and making sure the highways were clear, and the guardsmen were only sticking around to deal with supplies: They were currently loading pallets into the back of an olive green transport vehicle for shipment to the school.

"Alright," Sidwell said. "I'll get the snow mobile ready."

While Sidwell rushed off, Katz finished his coffee and went into his office. He had half a mind to let those stupid fucking kids freeze. Of course if _that_ happened, the people would vote him out so fast his badge would spin, and at fifty-three, Katz was too damn old to start another career.

He shrugged into his heavy green coat and pulled on a pair of gray snow pants. By the front door, he sat and put on snowshoes, followed by a black knit cap. Using a key, he unlocked a gun cabinet near the sergeant's desk and took a rifle and a shotgun. Outside, Sidwell pulled up on the snow mobile. Katz backed out of the door and stepped into the storm, a gust of wind smacking him across the face like a jilted woman. Hunching over, he made his way down the stairs (which were clear five minutes ago but already starting to get snowy again), and handed Sidwell the rifle. "In case we see that bastard Freeman!" he shouted into the deupty's ear. Sidewell slung the rifle over his shoulder.

Katz climbed onto the back of the snow mobile and laid the shotgun across his lap. "Go slow!"

In an oasis of warmth two miles northeast, Clyde McBride stared up into the shadows clustering in the ceiling, his heart and mind racing. Ronnie Anne's head lay on his chest, and he absently stroked her hair, marveling at how soft and warm it was. He licked his lips, and the taste of her lip balm flooded his mouth. It was a good taste, a comforting taste.

He was still in shock over what had happened, and was shocked even more when, after, as they lay in awkward silence, he rolled over and kissed her again, her face in his hands. She didn't resist, but gave herself willingly, melting into him. The first kiss may have been a fluke, Clyde thought, but the second...the second was...well, Clyde didn't know _what_ it was, but right now, he didn't care. She felt warm and _right_ in his arms, and everything was right with the world.

"I can't believe I'm doing this again," she muttered sleepily.

"Doing what again?" Clyde asked, not realizing until he spoke that he, too, was drowsing.

"Opening my heart up to someone."

"I can't believe you're doing it either. At least to me."

She shrugged. "I guess I have a thing for dorks."

Clyde chuckled. "You sure know how to pick them."

"You're sweet," Ronnie Anne said, looking up at him. "And...and I like that."

Less than five hundred feet from the shed, Eric Wayne Freeman forced Lincoln and Luan into the back of the van at gunpoint and climbed in after them.

"Lay on your stomachs," he commanded, and they did, dropping side-by-side. Taking roll of duct tape from the back he prepared back at the house, he wrapped both of their wrists tight, and then their ankles. He cut the tape from the roll with the knife and then prodded each one of them in the back. "You try anything and I'll cut your throats. Got it?"

Neither of them spoke.

" _Got it?"_

"Yes," the girl said miserably.

"Yeah," the boy said.

"Good." Freeman tucked the knife into his belt and crawled to the cab, where he sat behind the wheel. Outside, the storm pressed close against the windows. He glanced in the rearview mirror. The kids weren't moving, but they were talking.

"Shut the fuck up," he barked, and they fell silent.

When he was sure they were minding him, he turned his attention back to the road. He pressed the gas, and the van jerked roughly forward. The tires spun, and the back end started to slid. He held the wheel hard and corrected. Jesus H. Christ, he knew snow was hard to drive on, but this was ridiculous.

Suddenly angry, he stomped on the gas, the van shot forward.

In the back, Lincoln turned to Luan. Her face was red and tear-streaked. Rage rose in Lincoln's chest. His thoughts turned to the unborn child possibly nestled in his sister's womb, and the world blurred.

"Can you reach me?" he mouthed.

She nodded, sniffed, and shuffled closer, whipping her head to look into the cab. The man was focused on the road, the wheel shuddering in his hands. She scooted closer, and then used her knees to shimmy down. Lincoln didn't know what she was doing, then he felt her doing something to his back. He craned his neck around as far as it would go, and watched as she attacked the duct tape binding his hands with her teeth. He turned to the cab. Their kidnapper was not paying attention. The front end slid, and he jerked the wheel to the left. "Come on, you piece of shit!" he yelled. "Come on!"

Lincoln's heart was slamming against the floor. He looked back, and saw Luan come up for breath. Blood dripped from her gums.

She went back to it, and he tried to help by pulling his hands as far apart as he could. He could feel it beginning to give.

The van came to a sudden, jerking halt. "What the fuck is this?" the man yelled. Lincoln looked, terrified that they had been caught. The man grabbed a rifle from the passenger seat and threw the door open.

"Hurry!" Lincoln hissed.

He flexed and pulled, flexed and pulled.

Outside, a gunshot rang out, and Luan yelped in fear.

Lincoln pulled, and his hands came free.

-2-

Eric Wayne Freeman watched as the snow mobile floated out of the storm, its headlights flashing blue and red. _Here, piggy, piggy, piggy_.

When he could make out the shape of the cop driving it, he lifted the rifle to his shoulder and fired. Pow! The asshole slumped off and dropped to the snow. Another cop leapt off and ducked behind it. Freeman pulled the lever, ejecting the spent cartridge, and fired again as he shuffled forward: The bullet ricocheted off the side of the snow mobile with a metallic _ping!_ He cocked the lever and fired again.

"Come on out, you fucking pig!" Freeman cried into the wind; the words were shoved back down his throat, along with a heaping helping of snow. He was cocking the lever again when the cop jumped up and fired from the hip: Buckshot struck Freeman's right arm and side, tearing away his flesh. He screamed and returned fire; the cop jerked and fell, but not before getting off one more blast: Pellets dug into his right shoulder, neck, and the side of his face. Hot agony filled his consciousness, and he screamed as his knees gave out and he fell into the cold snow.

In the van, Lincoln ripped the tape from his feet, and hurriedly freed Luan. Outside, the killer and the cop traded shots.

Looking around for a weapon, Lincoln spotted a big red wrench sticking out from under the passenger seat. He crawled to it, grabbed it, and looked at Luan. "Run," he said.

"Lincoln..."

" _Run!"_

Outside, the killer fell into the snow and didn't move for a minute. Lincoln threw open the driver door and jumped down, the snow consuming his legs up to the knee. He looked back at Luan, who seemed to snap awake: She opened the back doors and jumped into the storm.

The killer was struggling to get to his hands and knees. Lincoln saw him, but didn't: He saw instead Luan and his unborn child, the woman he loved and his baby. And he saw a threat to them.

Gritting his teeth, Lincoln trudged toward him. Just as he got to his hands and knees and looked up, Lincoln brought the wrench down in a deadly arch: The killer's eyes widened, then snapped closed when it struck him in the side of his head: Blood shot from his nose and mouth. Lincoln brought it back up and down again; Freeman went face down in the snow, and Lincoln straddled his back. He hit him one, two, three, four, five more times, screaming in primal fury. Blood spurted across the snow, turning it from white to crimson; chunky pink brain matter seeped from his ears and the back of his head; splinters of jagged white bone thrust up through the mess.

Lincoln hit him one more time, burying the wrench deep into Freeman's skull cavity. He was panting, his heart racing. He turned, and Luan watched him from behind one of the doors, her face twisted in horror.

Catching his breath, Lincoln stood up and approached her. He expected her to shy away from him, but she didn't, and he took her in his arms. She was stiff.

"I love you," he said, "and our baby. And I will do anything to protect you."

She broke down crying then, and Lincoln held her as her body shook. He cried too.

The storm slackened around 5 that afternoon. Clyde was dozing with Ronnie Anne in his arms when a piercing wail started them awake: Red and blue lights streaked across the walls.

"What's that?" she muttered.

"I think it's the cops."

Clyde got to his feet and went to the door, but it was blocked, so he went to the window and peered into the gathering gloom: Through the snow, he could make out several police cars parked in the tundra, their lights flashing.

"It _is_ the cops!" Clyde said excitedly over his shoulder. Ronnie Anne got to her feet and limped over. Clyde tried to lift the sash, but it wouldn't budge. He looked around, and spied a hammer hanging from a hook in the wall. "Watch out," he said as he grabbed it. Ronnie Anne stood a step back and covered her eyes as he smashed the pane, then picked the remaining shards from the frame.

"I'll go first," he said. He quickly pulled his boots on and donned his jacket. He climbed head first through the window, and dropped into the soft snow. He got up and Ronnie Anne's face appeared. "Come on," he said.

She went out backwards, and started to fall, but he caught her, and they both fell.

"You're a regular Peyton Manning," she said and giggled as they got up. Hand-in-hand, they walked to their salvation.


	11. After the Storm

**People are still griping that this story is obscene because Lincoln and Luan are together. I warned them. I really did. Well, the last few paragraphs is about them having sex. If you've stuck with me and stayed cool, and that offends you, I'm sorry, just stop reading after the scene with Ronnie Anne and Clyde. For you other gripers...guaranteed you're going to read it anyway, because even though you cry about how awful it is, deep down, that sort of thing titillates you. Well, titillate away, because here it comes.**

 **PS. Maybe there will be a sequel, maybe not. I was thinking of doing an alternate timeline (as it were) where Lincoln winds up with Lynn. The story would involve a camping trip. Beyond that, I don't know anything else. If you like that idea, let me know.**

The day after the storm, while the residents of Royal Woods dug out of nearly four feet of snow, Luan waited impatiently as Lisa analyzed a urine sample Luan had given her that morning. Lincoln waited with her. They held hands and talked about what they would do if the test came back positive. Luan told him about Lisa's offer of a chemical abortion, but Lincoln wasn't comfortable with that.

Neither was she, to be honest.

They decided that if they were pregnant, they would have to take responsibility, whatever form in which it may come. They also decided that, come hell or high water, they would keep their child.

At half past three, Lisa came into Lincoln's room and shut the door. She was holding a vial of pills in her hand.

"What are those?" Luan asked.

"I'll get to that," Lisa said. "First, the results are in. Luan...you are _not_ pregnant."

Luan's heart skipped a beat. She didn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed.

Truth be told, she was a little of both.

"Then why have I been puking every morning?" 

Lisa shrugged. "Nothing came back, so I'm going to assume it's stress. Carrying out an affair with your brother while trying to keep it hidden from your parents does that to you, I'd imagine."

"What's in the bottle?" Lincoln asked.

"Birth control." Lisa tossed the bottle at Lincoln, and he caught it. "One a week, that's all you need. It's very potent. I made sure of that. I haven't tested it, but if something gets through while you're on it, it's superhuman and will probably fight crime when it's older."

With that, Lisa took her leave.

Lincoln hugged his sister and kissed her cheek. "I'm kind of glad," Lincoln said. "I'm not ready to be a father."

"I'm not ready to be a mother," she said, "but I'm still kind of disappointed. I got used to the idea."

Across town, Clyde McBride knocked on Ronnie Anne Santiago's front door, and her mother answered.

"Hi, Mrs. Santiago," he said. "Is Ronnie Anne here?"

"Yes," Mrs. Santiago said, appreciatively eyeing the flowers the boy carried. Of the many stories printed in the Monday edition of the _Royal Woods Republican,_ LOCAL BOY SAVES GIRL was one of the only, if not _the_ only that ended on a happy note. They said he was a hero. He didn't feel like one, though. All he did was help someone get out of the snow. What kind of world was it where someone helping someone else was newsworthy?

Mrs. Santiago led Clyde to Ronnie Anne's room. She was sitting up in bed, the covers pulled to her waist. Her left ankle was sprained and the doctor ordered her to stay off of it for three to five days. When she saw Clyde, her eyes lit up, and Clyde's heart pounded. He and Ronnie Anne had texted a little since the storm.

Mrs. Santiago left, and Clyde drew up a chair.

"I-I brought you these," he said, handing the flowers to her. She took them and looked at them.

"You know, I don't really do flowers." She smelled them. "But these are pretty."

"Thanks," Clyde said.

For a moment they were silent, then Clyde started to speak what had been on his mind. "I know we were under extreme circumstances and all when we...you know...kissed, and I'll understand if you don't want to..."

"Clyde?"

He turned to her. "Yeah?"

"Come here."

Tensing, Clyde leaned in, and in one fluid motion Ronnie Anne grabbed him by his shirt, pulled him close, and kissed him.

"You're stuck with me, dork."

Clyde blinked. Then smiled.

"Wanna play a video game?"

That night, Lincoln and Luan made love for the first time since Luan watched him kill another human being. A part of her had been terrified at the savagery she saw in him, but another part _liked_ it. He was vicious and protective. The wild animal quality was on her mind when she slipped into his bed past midnight, wearing only a flimsy night-gown through which her erect nipples poked. For a time they simply held each other, breathing in unison, their hearts beating in time. Then, with nimble fingers, she slipped her hand into his pajama bottoms and touched him: His penis stiffened.

"You kind of scared me the other day," she said as she gently stroked his rapidly inflating shaft. "But you also made me feel...safe."

Lincoln let out a small moan as she rubbed the tip with her thumb. She grinned up at him and slid his pants down, yanking them off and tossing them aside. She mounted him, grinding herself against his rigid penis. She wore nothing beneath her night-gown.

"You were like a wild beast," she said, sliding down just enough so that the head of his penis prodded her tight hole. "And I liked that a lot."

She settled onto him, his penis entering her and straining against her walls. She threw her head back and moaned as he filled her. His hands flew to her hips, then rubbed around to the front of her gown. They closed on her small breasts, and she shuddered, her nipples aching under Lincoln's expert touch.

In one motion, he rolled her onto her back. He was on top of her, pinning her arms to the bed, his eyes intense, a sly grin on his face. "You like it when I'm a wild beast?"

Luan nodded devilishly.

Lincoln thrust into her, and she gasped. He grabbed her breasts, tweaking her nipples, and slammed into her once, twice more. Her eyes rolled back in her head and her toes curled. One more rough thrust, one more grunt, and she was done, call her the minute girl: Her orgasm rocked her fevered body, and she trembled with its power. Her climax threw Lincoln into his, his hot seed filling her.

For a long time, they lay together, entagled and panting.

"We're pathetic," she finally said.

Lincoln shrugged. "It comes and goes, I guess."

They laughed.

"One thing, though," Luan said.

"What's that?"

"Who's sleeping in the wet spot?"


End file.
